Demonic Resolution
by Thosa
Summary: Power isn't Sakura's strongest point. Thankfully for her, problem solving is. With an intent to become better that can only compare to Naruto's will to become Hokage, rest assured, she will succeed. She just has to figure out how. And hopefully not sell her soul along the way.
1. chapter 1

The clanging sound of metal on metal could be heard in the clearing.

 _She'd always known._

Chakra was gathered, and jutsu's were released.

 _It **shouldn't** be a surprise. _

An attack. A mistake. A trick.

 _And yet..._

"RUN!"

 _It **was**. _

"I'M NOT LEAVING YOU KAKASHI-SENSEI!"

 _Useless_.

"Weren't you the one who said that those who abandoned there comrades were worse than trash?"

 _She was useless._

"YOU WILL DIE! RUN!"

 _A complete waste of space._

"Demon shuriken!"

 _The only reason she wasn't dead yet was because her teammates had carried her weight till now._

"NOW!"

Sakura watched as her teammates faced an invincible opponent and free her teacher while she did nothing.

She watched as her teacher freed himself and fought off the missing-nin with everything he had, and win.

She was a waste. Completely useless to the team. They didn't need her.

"Thanks for the help, I've been trying to eliminate Zabusa for a while now."

"Hey sensei, who's that?"

She watched as her teacher explained everything, and the now named hunter nin disappear. She watched Kakashi fall to the ground. She followed her team silently to their clients home.

The team met a nice woman called Tsunami, the daughter of their client, who showed them their rooms and cooked dinner.

Sakura couldn't help it. She broke down crying.

She should've been alone, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) the thin paper walls weren't very sound proof, and Naruto was instantly by her side when he heard the quiet wails.

"What's the matter?"

She looked at him, tears trailing down her face. "I'm weak."

"...that's it?"

She looked at him in anger "what do you mean that's it?! I'm a weakling! I did nothing while you and Sasuke did everything!" She stopped yelling and broke down crying again. "I just don't understand, I thought I was at least better than the dead-last, but you didn't stay next to Tazuna while relying on your teammates! That was me! I-I...just don't understand how you got so strong..."

Naruto stared at her solemnly. "You're not a weakling Sakura, I'm just cheating."

"Than let me cheat too!" she said, fresh tears streaming down her face.

"You need the forth hokage and another kyuubi for that." He said with a serious expression.

She blinked. Once, twice. What.

Naruto lifted his shirt and with a flare of chakra, the most complex seal that Sakura had ever seen in her life was in front of her eyes.

"But..." she blinked, the academy had talked about jinchuuriki's, but most of her knowledge was personal research (just because she wanted a higher grade) and even then, she didn't know much...she did know however, the political implications of this, and it made no sense for Naruto to be a dead last...unless he had been faking the entire time...

"So were you always so strong? Why did you hide it?"

Naruto shook his head. "I was weak up until now, I just got stronger."

Sakura looked away, tears threatening to fall again. "so you just up and got better...I want to get stronger too but I'm just so weak..."

"Then get stronger." He replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

She opened her mouth to dispute his words, it wasn't that simple, and then shut it immediately. It was that simple.

"I...yeah." she said lamely. "Thanks."

"Glad I could help!" said Naruto with a grin, and left.

The following morning, Sakura hopped down from the branch and quickly followed her teacher before she lost sight of him. Naruto and Sasuke were still trying the tree walking exercise, a task that she had finished on her first try.

"Sensei wait!" The man stopped. "I finished the exercise, can you give me another?"

"I could, but at this point you don't need more control, you need more chakra, and for that to happen you need to continue to practise the tree climbing exercise. When you can manage a full 10 minutes without rest, call me."

She knew it was fair, she had weak reserves since the beginning of the academy, but still, she so hoped to learn something more, something that could give her an edge like Naruto's shadow clones, or Sasuke's fire techniques...

"But sensei, I'm so far behind compares to Naruto and Sasuke! Can't you teach me anything?" she asked pleadingly.

Kakashi shook his head. "Sasuke's from a clan and Naruto's...well...unique. it isn't your fault you're so far behind. Learning a new jutsu won't put you to their level: you need to master what you already know first and increase your stamina before trying anything else"

"Can't I learn the shadow clone jutsu like Naruto?"

"No, it requires way to much chakra. One would kill you."

"But sensei, Naruto can make hundreds!"

"Naruto's...an unique case."

"...the kyuubi gives you huge chakra reserves?"

Kakashi stopped walking. "Naruto told me last night" she supplied helpfully. "Good" he said sternly "It's an S-rank secret, with the hokage and Naruto being the only ones allowed to tell others. I hope you understand the implications-" She nodded obediently like a good girl should. "Good" he said again. "Sasuke's from a clan that was supposedly created via demons. Naruto literally has a demon in his gut. It isn't your fault you're so far behind Sakura, we all have a demon-enchantment of some type, even me. Don't worry about catching up, worry about being better." She nodded.

Sakura watched Kakashi leave.

Of course she hadn't said what the solution was.

The solution, obviously, was to hurry up and find her own demon enchantment. Kakashi's silent footsteps moved on and soon there was one.

She frowned to herself. Were did one go to get a demonic power up? A sacrificial ritual? Sakura didn't know if she was actually capable of doing something like that.

After a long morning of brainstorming, Sakura decided that her best bet was a library, (all legends have to have some truth to them) or perhaps the 'demon of the mist' (who was apparently alive). It was easier to lie about why she wanted to go to a library, than to find a missing-nin who would probably kill her on sight (If anybody asked, she was going there for a light read after a long morning of training, which wasn't a lie since her reserves were so pathetic that she couldn't even train for an entire day straight even if she wanted to).

It didn't take her long. One simple fact that she forgot about wave, was that it's pretty much a 'third world town' with Gato's interference.

The windows of the building where bared. The door broken down. Insects where everywhere. She still went inside, just to see if there where any books left, but nope, all that remained was a stench of...something and a couple of homeless people in the back. Hadn't the sign behind her said 'Library' she would have never guessed that this dump would be it. So no short route to power. Great.

Undeterred she simply decided to find a temple, before stopping and realising that even if there was one it would be in ruins.

Oh for fuck's sake.

Considering the mental images of demons doing everything they could to seduce humans with their powers, Sakura expected, not thought, to find a power up in no time.

She had knew about biases and fallacies, she knew about humans natural tendency to be to optimistic, the academy curriculum was heavily influenced by the hokages, all of them being philosophers. The second hokage had especially been interested making sure that the future generation wouldn't repeat humanities previous mistakes.

She expected that it would take a bit, maybe a few hours, worst case scenario an entire day to get in contact with the other world.

Sakura had done no progress in an entire week.

Well, almost a week, but it was still way too long in her mind. In the end she gave up and practised the tree climbing exercise until she could do it for 10 minutes straight without too much trouble.

"Well done." Said Kakashi approvingly. She half expected him to give her yet another training exercise, but instead he just said to rest. Apparently tomorrow was going to be a big day. She expected a big climatic fight with the not-dead-missing-nin with her super power up being fundamental to save the day, but nope, Kakashi had called for backup and now half a dozen anbu where here. They were to leave in the morning.

She went to sleep in relief. Part of her was scared of encountering Zabusa again, so not having to meet him was great.

"I'll leave the rest to you then eh?" said Kakashi to the masked man in a laid back manner.

Elephant mask nodded, and together, team Kakashi left. Naruto groaned. "What's the matter?" Sakura asked him, making sure to at least try to treat him better. "I just expected more I guess. Like some sort of epic battle with me and Sasuke vs the fake hunter nin, and who knows, maybe the enemy has a cool bloodline and destroys us and it's up to me to save the day-"

"Highly unlikely" said Sasuke with a scoff. "You'd just throw shadow clones around, it's me who'd do the real work-" the fight was cut off by a huge explosion.

And then there where black clouds.

Shinobi weren't dumb, or at least, Jonin weren't dumb (one does simply not promote a dumb chunin) but even for the few dumb ones, there was still protocol to save their dumb hides from a painful death. Kakashi isn't dumb, nor does he ignore protocol (unless the life of his fellow comrades is at stake).

Sometimes however, shit hits the fan even while everything was done, such is life. When Kakashi first suspected that the client was lying he suppressed the urge to out right kill him (you just simply didn't murder a client on a hunch, that would be stupid and ruin konoha's reputation) and he immediately summoned Pakun discreetly, (which would normally be hard to do, but Kakashi was no longer in anbu, and creating a shadow clone and replacing himself with it without seals or smoke was child's play for a ninja at his level) with the order to summon him and (temporarily) his team as soon as he gave the signal (a simple release-seal, that would simply illuminate once activated connected to another one that he could activate in his sleep).

Everything went better than excepted though, and his team swiftly dealt with the chunin that went after them.

He of course told Pakun to return to konoha with the request for backup (which took about an hour considering the dogs speed and ability to reverse summon himself to his contract holder whenever he pleased) and out of sheer curiosity asked his team what they should do (a simple test of character) and was surprised when not only they considered continuing, they actually chose the option.

He didn't know if that was a matter of courage or simple stupidity, but what the hell, they weren't in danger for it would take an hour for the anbu to arrive and another day to get to wave at the pace that they were going at.

That's when shit hit the fan.

Apparently some bullshit with unknown ninja happened, and the anbu had to deal with it. The unknown ninjas were skilled enough to actually kill one of them, and hurt another two, so the squad was delayed. By a week. A fucking week.

Thankfully his team managed to deal with Zabusa without too much trouble, while he swiftly recovered from his chakra exhaustion (he had to stop using high level jutsu's that were water and wind element, it just wasn't worth it, even if it was fun watching the enemy stare in shock at his ability to finish their jutsu that he had supposedly never seen before, and not only complete it before they did, but overpower them at it).

But then the anbu arrived and he could calmly go home. Everything went well, Konoha would get an amazingly convenient contract as soon as wave got on it's own feet, and his team had real life experience to motivate them to train harder, especially Sakura, who he once worried would get captured and killed or worse on her first real mission. Instead, she had worked her ass off for the entire week. Kakashi had rarely felt this proud before.

The hardest thing that he expected to do was to walk back to konoha, and maybe get ambushed by bandits.

He did not expect four S-rank criminals to arrive from nowhere and slaughter them.

Never had Kakashi been so grateful for the existence of seals.

He stared at his student next to him, lying in the hospital bed in a coma. He wasn't sure how, but according to Sasuke, Itachi had tried to do something and Sakura had tried to shield him. Now she was in a coma and Naruto and Sasuke were training there asses off in guilt, especially Sasuke.

He shook his head, sometimes even if he did nothing wrong he would still fail.

The worse part was that he couldn't even learn from his mistakes: the usual coping mechanism that he used to deal with his past regrets. 'Don't do this' or 'look out for that' were the usual rules. This time however, there was nothing to learn from: not in his wildest dreams would he imagine four S-rank appearing out of nowhere and mind fucking his student. _"New rule"_ he thought, and stopped. What could he say? If something can go wrong, it will?

No, that wasn't an efficient way of living: as a ninja, you worked on information, hunches and mostly luck. Having wrong information was bad, but he could deal with that. Having wrong hunches was harder, but he had enough experience to usually survive everything without too much trouble. Having bad luck? He may as well not leave konoha anymore.

If he had a way to deal with four S-rank ninjas on every mission, then he wouldn't have to worry about hardly anything. He was just glad that the seal that he gave Pakun also had an adrenaline-induced trigger, and so his summon had obeyed his order when he did, otherwise he would have been done for.

 _"That was also luck"_ he mused: Pakun hadn't been on duty, and easily could have forgotten to summon him, thankfully he hadn't, and thankfully his team had still been part of the temporary contract.

But now Sakura was in a coma, and his right arm was permanently done for (he had managed to seal the black flames almost instantly, almost instantly wasn't enough though).

With the permanent injuries of their teacher, and unknown amount of time their teammate would be a vegetable, team Kakashi had been disbanded.

"Kakashi-sensei! I brought chocolate!" yelled a voice as the door to his left got slammed open.

Kakashi sighed and shook his head, suppressing a smile. Naruto didn't care though, in his mind he was still in team Kakashi. Sasuke walked in slowly after, almost as if he had been forced to come along (Kakashi would have bet his life that Naruto had indeed forced him to come) and kept his eyes away from Sakura's sleeping form at all times.

"Hurry up at getting better sensei! We have to train and get stronger!" yelled Naruto.

"I'm not your sensei anymore Naruto, and as such, it's forbidden for me to teach you anything because of protocol...although...this isn't an order or anything, just a remark, anybody who wants to get stronger should, and now that I think about it, the academy is always open to anybody interested in reviewing something..."

Naruto just blinked, not understanding how going to the academy could be useful, Sasuke on the other hand, remembered that there was a certain chunin who had learnt all ninja branches to a sufficient level that he could help all types of students, (as they had just graduated, they weren't above the level) one that also coincidently just happened to not be biased towards Naruto.

Yes, it was time to pay Iruka-sensei a visit.


	2. chapter 2

Chapter 2

She woke to the smell of flowers. Lots of different flowers to. She looked around curiously, where was she?

"Sakura!" yelled a voice happily "You're awake!"

She blinked dumbly. Huh?

She was met with the faces of her teammates and crippled sensei. What.

"NO SHOUTING!" yelled a hypocrite nurse as she walked in the room.

Silence.

The nurse checked on her physical state in amazement, muttered something, and left. Ok...

Other nurses walked in and also did some random (to her) check ups and then left. After the third group of nurses came and left, Sakura was getting worried.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"You just came out of a coma done to you by an S-rank criminal. In a single night. Everybodys trying to find out why." Explained Kakashi. Oh.

A few other nurses and doctors walked in and checked on her, and then she was allowed to leave with a recommendation to 'take it easy'.

"So...what Now?" she asked the rest of her team as they left the hospital. "Now we go find Iruka-sensei." Said Naruto.

She frowned in thought. Iruka was a chunin, and while they still had a lot to go to get to his level, it didn't make sense that he would teach them while they still had Kakashi (even if he was a cripple now, one does simply not underestimate a jonin, even if they were 9/10th dead) unless...

"Guys...are We still team Kakashi?" she asked fearfully. "Sasuke confirmed her fears."

"I don't get it though" said Naruto with a frown. "Why Iruka? Why not just go to some other jonin?"

"Protocol" she replied. "Konoha can't afford to give secrets to people that might turn traitor later on, so they only hand out secrets to the most trusted, and everyone else has to work on their own..." She noticed Sasuke was thinking hard about something "...but the academy is an exception. Even if every country in the world knew everything we learnt in the academy, it still wouldn't help much to a person outside Konoha: the leaf floating exercise for example, is completely useless in Suna and Iwa, and not very helpful in the other countries,on the other hand it teaches Konoha children how to focus their chakra and learn how to release it from their body at a constant pace. While it isn't the best option, it's better than training _ourselves_."

Everybody nodded at this, even Naruto.

Despite the resolution, the walk to the academy didn't happen immediately. First things first Sakura went home to tell her parents that she was fine.

She had hoped that they were still in the dark about things, but that turned put to be wishful thinking. Not only did they know everything, they were intent of taking her out of the shinobi system, something they weren't allowed to do thankfully.

As much as Sakura wanted to just run away from the problem, she just couldn't bere to abandon Sasuke, Naruto and even Kakashi like that. She had to fight on.

While she won in the end, (thanks to konoha law viewing her as an adult the moment she became a full fledged genin) it was still a long and tiring fight that took up the rest of the day. She and the rest of her team intended to go to Iruka straight away, something that turned out to be pure optimism.

Still, as soon as she woke up the next day, she immediately got dressed and headed to the academy. Sasuke was already there and Naruto came shortly after.

It was a Tuesday (Sakura blinked in surprise about the difference of relevant information in her life: just a mere month ago she always knew the day, date and time, now she didn't even know what month it is) so the classes were still on, so the academy teaches were working. She had voted to wait in the school library, while Naruto voted that they should wait in the training grounds.

Sasuke had acted like a mediator and reluctantly made them agree to do both, pointing out that a shinobi trains his mind and body.

So they had read a bit, and then gone to the training grounds for a bit of light exercise. After a light snack, the academy bell rang and classes were dismissed. It didn't take long for them to find Iruka.

The chunin was surprised at seeing them: never to be much of a gossip, he still didn't know that their team had been disbanded, so hadn't even imagined seeing them again. Still, being the ever professional, he quickly got over it and instructed different exercises on the fly. If teaching could be ranked in a scale from one to ten, Sakura guessed that Iruka was a twelve, the amount of efficiency that he demonstrated in just a few minutes was something else. She had expected him to be good, not only because he was passionate about his job, but because he was also a professional (Naruto had mentioned that all the adults knew his secret).

They all had different schedules, that could be done together and on their own. Iruka had said that it was better to separately do training different from each other, and do the same training that they had together for team bonding experiences (training exercises that were conveniently highlighted in bright green).

Sakura had a lot more endurance training than Naruto and Sasuke put together , but it was fair since she didn't have much stamina (Sakura noted with private glee, that she had about 1/10th the amount of chakra control exercises than her teammates put together).

Iruka was many things, but biased was not one of those.

She had privately asked if their was anything that she could do to catch up to her teammates, and the man suggested to create new strengths instead of getting rid of weaknesses. He gave her a piece of paper that one could use to sign up to the medic corps, a few tips on genjutsu and fuinjutsu, and another sheet of paper with a list of names of a few civilians that were decent enough at kenjutsu to benefit her (since they were civilians that had never been shinobi in their lives, they weren't apart of the 'not train others law', Sakura noted this piece of information with interest).

Iruka had said that she should at least check out one of these things.

Sakura smiled, nodded in thanks, and went to check out all of them. Why get one strength instead of four?

 _"Life rule: when stumped, ask others"_ Sakura thought to herself in amazement.

After checking out what the academy had on genjutsu and fuinjutsu (a decent amount on the first, barely any on the second) she had gone to the hospital.

She expected a complicated test to prove her worth, or maybe an assignment of the 'if you master this jutsu in X amount of time, you pass" but instead, all they did was ask her name and surname, take a quick glance at her academy results, and she was in.

It was so anticlimactic, that it wasn't even funny.

They hadn't taught her anything though, as she needed to go to a lot of classes first: the academy taught the basics of the human body, but the basics weren't enough to become a medic.

So she had gone to the civilians that Iruka had named (with their addresses conveniently right to the side) and tried to request training...

Which they granted without a second thought. As if their abilities wasn't a personal treasure or something.

All they asked was for money. Money that her parents could easily afford, and that she could only dream of (unless she went on another five A-rank missions), and of course, her parents wouldn't pay: "I won't pay for your death" was her mothers opinion, while her father just remained silent. She had tried to...not exactly blackmail, more like mention that she would be a ninja anyway, and no training means increased probability of death. Her mother just shook her head and said something along the lines of "parents don't pay for the death of their children" and that had been it.

In an act of desperation, she held an emergency team meeting (an idea that Shikamaru had came up on the last day of the academy) between her graduation class, and asked for help from her piers.

She had thought about 'money making missions' and the like, and instead she got chakra exercises for increased muscle tissue from Chouji and Kiba,mental awareness exercise for genjutsu detection from Ino, more chakra control exercises from Hinata and Shikamaru, and a special bracelet from Shino which he didn't mention how or why he had it, just that it would suck chakra from her, therefore forcing her body to increase it's reserves.

She thanked them all profoundly and made a mental note to make it up to them someday, and got to work.

For the following week she trained as much as she could, using all the pointers that she had got from different people, and had grown immensely (according to Iruka), even if the hospital took up most of her time.

Sasuke had disappeared for the entire week, and had randomly given her and Naruto Ninjutsu scrolls from...somewhere (her breath hitched when she saw the uchiha clan sign on it, and realized that he had gotten it from the famous uchiha library), while Naruto had abused the heck out of his shadow clones ability to act without surveillance, and done who knows how many D-ranks (for a single genin wasn't allowed to do more than that) and had randomly donated a huge amount of cash to her and Sasuke.

She blinked in realization when she had nothing to give, so she quickly wrote down the same list of names that she had got from Iruka (of course she had memorized them) with the addresses.

Sasuke had frowned, causing her to look down in shame while Naruto winced, reminding her how unpopular he was with the adults. Noticing her look of distress Naruto patted her on the back and encouraged her, saying that he didn't mind and that he was sure that next time she would do better.

She had nearly cried than, but didn't when she remembered Naruto's mentality (want something? Then just get it!), and nodded to both of them.

 _"New objective"_ she thought _"find way to become powerful, and share it with the others"._ She would pay them back. End of the story.

It was easier said then done. She spent the rest of the morning trying to brainstorm ways to power, when she remembered her earlier resolution, and decided to pay a visit to the local library for ways to summon demons.

She expected difficulties, but not out right failure. She was wrong. After checking out the library she went to a temple on the outskirts of Konoha, but she recognized the fake news when she saw it, and realized that they didn't have a divine connection at all.

So now what?

 _"How did others get demonic powers?"_ She wondered to herself.

She thought about clans. Yeah no, she wanted powers for herself, not to fuck a demon and have a hybrid kid.

She thought about Naruto. Hell no, she wouldn't become a jinchuuriki for all the money in the world (not that she could), finally, she thought about Kakashi. His thing with the sharingan was awesome, even if it was a bitch on his reserves.

And while the sharingan wasn't an option because lack any clan members (and like hell was she going to take one from Sasuke), she also didn't like it because she'd have no way to pay back the others.

 _"It has to be something that isn't hard to give to the others"_ she mused.

A jutsu? Perhaps? No it had to be more than that. She had received a permanent foundation from the others, and she'd be damned if she didn't give twice as much back. It had to also be something that nobody knew about. Something obscure yet existent...

 _"I'm thinking about this in the wrong way"_ she thought to herself. _"I should treat it as a problem I already solved, and find the answer from there: I'm obscure yet known, complex but useful, what am I?"_

The answer came like a bolt of lightning.

 _"Fuinjutsu"._


	3. chapter 3

Being Hokage used to be a honor in Hiruzen's mind. These days it was a pain more than anything else.

Looking at the jonin in front of him, the aged man couldn't help but sigh. Out of all the ninjas to loose, he lost one of the very best.

At a first glance, Kakashi was the usual case of high class elites: arrogant, lazy, late for everything, and most importantly; a disgrace. He had a reputation for knowing hundreds of jutsu's, was a jonin at age 13, son of one of Konoha's gratest legends, and yet he is not only a mere jonin, but a crippled one? 'He ought to kick him down a rank or two' was the general thought concerning this man.

Of course, once you get trained by two Hokage's, you learn a thing or two about looking behind the facade of men, or 'underneath the underneath' as Kakashi would always say. The man has a mastery on all five elements, knows every ninja branch to a jonin level (even obscure arts like fuinjutsu) and had somehow managed to not become an S-rank nin.

One would think that he just doesn't have the stuff, but a man of his age and experience knows the recipe to getting to the top: an unique ability.

How is it possible that in over ten years with knowledge of every ninja art, he still hasn't gotten to the top?

How is it that he still retained his rank, despite his crappy attitude?

One of the many benefits of being Hokage, Hiruzen supposed, was knowing everything. The jonin right in front of him was incredible, almost poetic. Almost. Had he been another person he would be marveled at this man's life. A mask of incompetence and laziness carefully hid the loyal and broken man he was, but underneath that was a man of incredible skill and knowledge.

Hiruzen however was the hokage, and knowing that one of your men is hiding his abilities because he doesn't want to endanger other people's life was not only stupid, but selfish.

"Hello Kakashi, can you guessed why I summoned you here?" He said politely.

A test. It's incredible how many people confess things when they are anxious and of guard, a slight widening of the eyes, a look of fright. Anything. Kakashi unfortunately, was neither off guard, nor anxious (and if was, he was an expert at hiding it).

"Something to do with me?" The annoying man replied with one of his 'eye smiles'.

"Yes. Two things actually. The first is a mere curiosity."

"And what would that be?"

"Many things. First, I find it curious how you managed to be the only one damaged, despite the fact that you were the furthest from Itachi's sight, and yet his amaterasu manages to get you. I also find it curious that you completely ignored him, the other two memebers of the Akatsuki and attacked his partner, the furtherest of the nins, almost as if you knew that the other two nins abilities weren't a threat, thanks to the particular skill set of the anbu present, and that Kisame was the only problem there. Very suspicious if you consider the fact that Itachi just finished attacking you with an S-rank jutsu."

Hiruzen stared at him intently, Kakashi gazed back without emotion.

"Another thing that I find curious" he continued, "is that Pakun summoned you just as things got hairy. Not to mention Kisame randomly losing a head and you, the man who never abandons his comrades, running away just like that. It's as if you knew that they would win."

Still no emotion.

"I also found it very interesting that you yourself don't know why you did this, almost as if you couldn't remember the event...or if your memories where sealed."

A widening of the eyes so small, anybody but Hiruzen wouldn't have seen it, much less remember seeing it. Unfortunately for Kakashi, he was dealing with the third Hokage.

"I assure you Hokage-sama, I would recognize something like that."

"I know." Said Hiruzen intently. "That's why we are having a meeting right now."

A pause.

"You aren't the only one who has discovered the hidden arts." Said Hiruzen with a shake of his head. "I just didn't think that anybody would have a natural affinity for mind manipulation other then _them_."

"I don't" said Kakashi with a sigh. "I simply reversed engineered a few things with seals. It's the sharingan that does the rest."

"Explain. Now."

Kakashi hesitated. "When Obito died, I got obsessed with getting stronger: Minato-sensei managed to kill everyone in seconds and save me and Rin without trouble. 'If only I was as good as him I' thought." Hiruzen nodded, he already knew this. "But it's when Rin died that I stopped the madness. I was plenty strong, but that obviously wasn't enough. I decided to switch tactics, and since I didn't know what to learn, I decided to learn everything."

Hiruzen said nothing. Had anybody else said that, he would have rolled his eyes: even with his shadow clones, it took years before he became a master in every ninja art. For somebody else to one day 'decide' to do that was absurd, but Kakashi was actually smart enough to pull it of.

"It was when I just finished my exams and became a full-fledged medic that I started to study my right eye: what was so special about it? Why could it do the things that it could do? Eyes aren't special, it's the brain that does most of the work anyway, why were these so different?"

"And then you discovered that they weren't."

"Exactly. I realised that they were the same thing. Therefore the question came: why could they do, what they do? I realised easily enough that it wasn't the eye, it's the uchiha: no wonder why deactivating the eye is a permanent thing for me, but it's no big deal if you're one of them. The realization lead me to the discovery of dark chakra: the mysterious chakra that activates the sharingan. I studied a lot more, and only by chance did I encounter an old friend of my father, a man who actually had a natural affinity for dark chakra. He explained how awakening the chakra lead him to his mind reading abilities, and via him joining my investigation, I discovered the uchiha secret to the mangekyou, a secret that was incomplete: killing your closest friend has an emotional trigger that releases dark chakra, the chakra then gets channeled in your entire body; your brain and chakra pathways are the most visible changes."

"So you unlocked the mangekyou sharingan."

"Not really, I activated it when Rin died, but didn't reactivate it because I didn't know I could. Once I discovered the secret I realised that I had no reason to not be able to."

"You talked about reverse engineering Baku's mind reading abilities. Explain."

"It's not really reverse engineering, and more like making a cheap copy. Baku-sensei did most of the work anyway: it's a more complex form of the alarm seal, and instead of lighting up, it conveys memories. It only works if you're close, and is very inflexible: having more than one pair at a time ruins it, so you can only have one seal per person, I only have three: one for Gai, one for Pakun and one for Tenzo. There is also the fact that you can't reliably control what information you give out, and what comes in, so it's for trust worthy people only."

Annoying and yet Hiruzen could see the uses. It's a shame that he couldn't trust Danzo at that level anymore.

"So that explains knowing what your Anbu teammates could do. What about knowing what the Akatsuki members?"

"Deidara is well known in the bingo book. I have no idea what that black and white plant man could do, but judging how he was right next to Kisame, I was guessing that he wasn't the combat type."

"The reason why Inoichi couldn't read this from your mind?"

"So you did order him to read me" said Kakashi with a grin "thought so, anyway I learnt Minato-sensei's method of shaping your own mindscape, and with that comes the ability to organize your memories better. Sealing away your memories is no big deal from there, as you know well, but making them undetectable is way harder."

"Very well, last two questions: how did Kisame randomly get decapitated and loose his sword?"

"My mangekyou sharingan can teleport things to another dimension. I teleported his sword and neck, although I was actually aiming for the heart."

Had Hiruzen been your average person, and the revelations would have blown him away. Instead, he just nodded and went on, as if this was an everyday occurrence. "That concludes part one. Can you guess what part two entails?"

"My team?"

"Precisely. As you are well aware you have talented students. Leaving them in reserve is a waste, especially with the invasion coming up- ah as I thought, you don't know everything that Tenzo does. Yes, there is an invasion coming up soon, I advice you to keep this to yourself. Everyone who needs to know already does and plans have already been made. As I was saying, your ex-students cannot be abandoned to the wolves and they won't be, as as soon as I put them up for anyone available, they were expected by someone... someone that I usually wouldn't allow to go out from his important duties, but I have made an exception. Someone that used to be my teammate. Yes, your fears aren't baseless, your ex-students new teacher is Danzo."

Sakura sighed to herself. Damn was her lessons getting harder. Thankfully they only lasted five hours, so she was done for the day. She walked home at a relaxed pace with her mind in half a dozen directions at the same time.

The most important issue on her mind right now was getting stronger, followed by paying back the others.

Just a few days ago, and these objectives would be too much pressure to think straight, now she was just grinning at the challenge. Ah the beauty that is reading.

She went home, washed and ate a quick snack (her parents would be home soon to cook) and went to her room to start reading. She had recently gotten access to the older parts of the library (only accessible to those who demonstrated themselves responsible enough) and had found a shit ton of fantasy books (who knew that science and magic could go so well together?)

Next to her book was a list of rules that she would never repeat, so far she has two:

1) Any technique which is good enough to defeat me once is good enough to learn myself.

2) I will not leave my power around for somebody else to copy/learn.

And boy did those rules change her! Just yesterday she met a girl a year older than her and challenged her to a fight. The girl had won easily enough and now she had an objective: have a 100% hitting probability with long ranged weapons.

It was a nice change of pace from the impossible tasks that she had set for herself like 'become a professional medic nin' or 'learn all there is to know about fuinjutsu', for she could actually see progress now, and was slowly and steadily getting better. She had recently managed to use the 'stunning jutsu', one of the jutsu's that Sasuke had given her: it was a lightning technique that was capable, as the name suggested, of stunning people. She had decided to learn that first because it was the one that required less chakra, and was also the fastest jutsu out of the three that Sasuke had given her. It sounded like the most useful.

She lay on her bed and started reading. Tomorrow morning she would get up and train, brainstorm a bit, study, go to the hospital, practise her precision and so on. She had a comfortable routine, and was feeling useful, even if she hadn't really done anything till now.

She just lay her eyes on the first sentence of the now opened book, when a knock on her window alerted her to the presence of someone right outside her window. She looked to her left and saw her ex-sensei. Huh? What did he want?

She opened her window, and greeted him formally. No need to be disrespectful.

"Hello sensei, what's the matter?"

The man looked troubled. "I need you to write a note explaining how you are doing some late night training, and expect to be back home by tomorrow morning. Leave it where they can find it please."

She did as she was told, as Kakashi had thought her to not mindlessly follow rules, but he had also taught her the importance of having them. Sometimes obeying without question saves lives. Plus she could just ask what's going on later.

Kakashi nodded when she was done, and in a puff of smoke, they were no longer in her house, but in a corridor.

"Kakashi-sensei, what's-"

"I'm taking a gamble." Was all he said.

They walked up to a door, and without knocking, Kakashi walked in. The room was very tidy and had a clean smell to it.

Near a desk was a man sitting at a chair. The man was obviously old, judging by his wrinkles and grey hair, but Sakura noticed how he was ripped underneath his thin white long sleeve shirt.

"This is Baku, one of my few but reliable teachers. Baku-sensei, this is Sakura, the girl that I was talking about."

"Hello Baku-san." She said nervously, receiving a small nod in response. "Can someone please tell me what's going on-"

"Later." Said Baku sternly, "we don't have time to waste."

She was told to stand still while Baku pressed his palm to her forehead. A feeling of coldness was came along her entire body, and a sudden rush of something filled her senses. What was going on?

She opened her eyes and noticed that a strange magenta collored chakra was coming from Baku's hand, and that her body was surrounded in it. She was about to ask what was going on again but she stopped when an enormous pain filled her head. A voice tried to talk to her in the back of her mind, but Sakura couldn't answer. She fainted.

Opening her eyes once again, Sakura was greeted to the sight of a anxious Kakashi, and a smiling Baku.

 _"What was that?"_ She asked with a groan, making Kakashi turn to her with wide eyes.

 _"A gamble gone right."_ Replied Baku.

 _"That's a gamble gone right? I'm afraid of what a gamble gone wrong is like."_

 _"It usually includes comas and other head traumas, sometimes even death."_

 _"Ah. Mind explaining what was that now?"_

 _"Not at all, that was me unlocking your hidden affinity activated with dark chakra, I call it a 'psychic affinity'."_

 _"A what activated with what now?"_

 _"Dark chakra. A mysterious chakra that all and only humans seem to have. It is a big unknown. Sometimes it activates abilities you call bloodlines, while other times it does nothing. Why? Nobody has a clue. Anyway, one of the rules that we have guessed with this chakra, is that it activates similar affinities. Since we both have the same affinities, I was able to jump boost your nature."_

 _"What do you mean? You get affinities at birth! The rest comes with training!"_

 _"That's how normal chakra works, yes. This one is learnt was faster, provided you have a lot more control. But unlike the normal chakra it has weird activation rules: be thankful that it was this easy for you, normal people have to have an enormous emotional trigger like a death of someone important to them, or something, thankfully for you, I learnt how to access my hidden chakra ages ago, and so we skipped the drama."_

 _"So what can I do?"_ She asked excitedly.

 _"What do you mean 'what can I do'? Haven't you seen that the entire conversation happened without either of us opening our mouths?"_

It was at this point that she realised that A) Kakashi hadn't talked at all during the conversation, B) she hasn't either, and C) Baku had also remained silent.

"I am _telepathic?"_ She started out loud, and finished in her mind.

 _"And more, much more. But we don't have time for the introductions, you must learn how to protect yourself."_

 _"Against what?"_

 _"As you know Kakashi is no longer your teacher. Problem is, your knew one has unknown telepathic powers, and evidence suggests that he can control peoples mind. We don't know the extent of his powers, just that, he stays away from me at all times. We think he has a byakugan, but we have no proof."_

 _"And how do I fit in this?"_

 _"Evidence suggests that I am immune to his powers and may even be able to read his mind, something that the Yamanaka clan cannot do for some reason. The idea is to make you imune first, and then if everything goes to plan, you will read his mind, and find out information that we desperately need."_

Sakura blinked, not expecting any of this. Still, it was power offered on a silver platter. "I'm in." She said with conviction.

 **Another chapter with a few hidden easter eggs. I don't know what prize I'll give to who gets all of them, but there is a prize.** **I want to give thanks to those who reviewed my story, you guys have no idea how much that motivates me to write (or maybe you guys do?), anyway, does anyone have a good website for spell checking errors? The one that I use (google) is crap. I hate it (and haven't used it since the first chapter).**


	4. chapter 4

Getting plenty of sleep was the norm for Sakura, so waking up tired was something that she definitely wasn't used to. The clock beside her bed told her that it was a bit over half past six, therefore she had gotten an hour of sleep. Great.

She groaned to herself, and started the exercises that Baku sensei had assigned: the first one was called dark chakra synchronization, or dark synch for short, it involved relaxing ones body to get a better feel for the incredible small amount of dark chakra within. If her normal reserves were bad, this was down right pathetic: she couldn't even make a bushin with this.

Thankfully for her, her natural affinity didn't require much chakra, and with little to no effort, she activated her 'mind eye.' An ability that didn't do much, but was cool non less: she wasn't actually seeing anything, more like sensing, and with it she could 'feel' other people's minds. This was the second part of the exercise.

Her parents were down stairs, (or she guessed, she hadn't felt them yet, so she hadn't gotten a chance to memorize their signature) a smell of cooked bacon instantly got her out of her medative stance, and she hurried down stairs to eat.

"Morning!" She said brightly, and sat down at the table and quickly got some food.

"Morning dear." Her mother replied. "How did lasts night training go?"

"Tiring" she replied with a groan. "But cool. I learnt a new lightning jutsu from Sasuke!" If word got out that she got private late night training and learnt new jutsu's from another ninja, she, Kakashi and Baku would be in trouble. So Kakashi had told her to not hide it (and therefore get people curious) but talk about it continuously, or however she would usually act about something she had no need to hide. Sakura had blinked in surprise at the deception, and pointed out that talking about illegal stuff was the quickest way to get discovered, and to that, Kakashi responded that she wasn't seeing him, but another genin.

Since most genin didn't really have jutsu's to teach, Sasuke was the chosen one for her cover.

At her obvious concerns, Baku had waved her off saying that Sasuke's memories would be modified. Huh.

She supposed that she should have been more creeped out about that, but she couldn't really bring herself to care. Maybe it was because she herself was immune to such a thing?

She ate breakfast happily while her father walked in, said good morning, and gave her a small letter. At her questioning glance, he opened it and read it out loud.

The letter was a formal one, from Konoha's administration office, and it gave her the order to go to training ground 37 by 8 'tomorrow morning' (The letter arrived yesterday, or at least that's what the date on the package said, so that means that tomorrow is today). She acted surprised but not too concerned and mostly curious-exactly how she would have acted, had she had not already known that she would be getting a new teacher.

She ate quickly and got ready to leave, combat equipment and everything (Baku had frowned at her choice of red and white, but didn't say anything against it), and she left, ready to meet her new teacher.

As she walked, she was greeted to the sight of an old man struggling to carry an enormous bag. Shrugging (she had a lot of time on her hands) she offered to help him, much to his delight.

The old man lead her to his house, with the order to leave it on his table in the living room. The old man gave her a few biscuits as a reward.

"So, you're a ninja huh?" He asked curiously.

"Yep."

"Can you do ninja magic then? Are you super fast? Do you assassinate people in the night?" He asked with incredible intensity. Had he been anyone else, and she would have felt uncomfortable but the old man made her feel at ease.

"Yes I can so ninja magic, but not much. I'm not really fast but I'm trying to get better, and no, I don't really do any of that stuff." she said sheepily. That sounded unimpressive even to her.

"What are you going to do now?" He asked curiously.

"Going to meet my new sensei!"

"How are you feeling? Exited? Nervous?"

"A bit of both actually, I've never met him before."

"What do you think he's like?"

"Stern I guess, I don't know much, only that he's really mysterious and old."

The old man shook his head. "Mystery just means lack of knowledge. There is nothing mysterious about reality, just a lack of understanding. Suppose you were your teacher, what would you do the first day you met your team?"

"Get to know them I guess, personalities, combat abilities, intelligence etc."

"And how would you do that?"

"Uhh, I'd test them. See what they are capable of."

"But you know that they are going to try to be impressive." The man said with a shake of his head. "How would you learn what the real them is like?"

She blinked. "Well I'd get to know the real them eventually."

"Yes but what if you had a lot to do, and didn't know if it was worth the trouble getting to know the team?"

"I don't know, I'd probably do something extreme to see the real them, something unexpected, like study them in hidden or try to get to know them when they don't think they are talking to me-" she stopped. The old man had a weird glint in his eye. "Excuse me, I just remembered that I didn't ask you your name."

"Me? Oh, my name is Danzo Shimura."

Normal people would've been a bit anxious at meeting a new teacher, but Sasuke didn't fit into that category.

He arrived at the training grounds a bit early with nothing noteworthy happening in the morning and waited patiently.

He didn't have to wait long.

Sasuke knew he wasn't normal, and that's why he liked his team: a weird sensei, a girl, and a guy with a childhood on his level of bad, was better than anything he could've asked for.

That's why he was surprised at his teammates reaction when they met their new teacher. He himself didn't notice anything strange, but Naruto's mouth dropped to the floor and he pointed at the man as if his entire life was a lie, while Sakura didn't do much (but as an Uchiha, incredible attention to details come with the black hair and pale skin, and he noticed how she was incredibly uncomfortable).

What's up with this guy?

The training session wasn't much, they just had to fight their way through the training ground, which was filled with traps, but between Naruto's clones and his eyes, they got through the thing without too much trouble.

The man told them to come back the following morning at the same time as today and left, without saying a thing.

"I can't believe that old man Takashi was Danzo sensei all along!" Said Naruto in shock. "For this entire time I was living next to a jonin!"

Sasuke didn't really care about his ramblings but Sakura was way more interested. "Who's Takashi?" She asked.

"He's an old man that lived next to my apartment for years! He never forgot a single birthday of mine! He used to read me stories when I'd have nightmares! He bought me my first shuriken set! He helped me with my homework! This is nuts!"

Sasuke shrugged, not seeing the big deal, but he noticed that Sakura was suddenly a lot more uncomfortable.

"Man I wished I asked him for training earlier!"

"That would have been a waste of time." Said Sasuke with a shake of his head. "He can teach us now because he's our teacher, but before today he couldn't do anything because protocol."

"Ah true. Good! That means I don't have to regret anything!" Naruto replied with a cheeky grin. "Who's up for ramen?"

"Not me." Said Sakura with a shake of her head. "I have too many things to do."

 _"Like catching up"_ Sasuke thought bitterly. He had not forgotten how far behind she was last night.

"Ah, that's fine then. What about you Sasuke?"

He shrugged. Why not. He was hungry anyway.

"So how did it go?" Asked Baku anxiously, as Sakura walked into his house.

Sakura opened her mouth. Then closed it. She opened her mouth again, but no sound came out.

"I see" he said gravely. "Let me access your memories please."

She nodded and felt Baku sensei's chakra fill her head.

"Me? Oh, my name is Danzo Shimura."

Sakura stared at the 'old man', and he stared back. She immediately tried to access his mind, remembering her orders, but was blocked. Suddenly it was her mind that was getting read.

She put up a full block, and Danzo frowned at her. "Sloppy." He said. "If i had been here to kill you, not only would I have gotten all of your secrets, you would have died without making a sound."

She said nothing. "Your private training will start in two days time. I expect you to be fully rested, and on guard."

She couldn't breathe. A test. It had been a huge test. And she had failed.

"Humans cannot be constantly paranoid at all times, it's not how they function. You have no excuses however, to not read at least the surface thoughts of those around you. What if the old man had been an assassin?. He said sharply.

"But I'm at home! There would be no reason-"

"It does not matter where you are, but what happens. You where in the middle of the street. Alone. Also you do not know everything, so while there could be no reason for you, there could be a reason for others! You have a gift in retrieving information, how dare you not use it!"

She blinked hard, tears starting to form at her eyes, but she did not let them fall. She had failed. "I-I'll use it next time-"

"No you won't! You'll forget! It's up to me to give you survival habits, that's what teachers are for." He finished softly.

She nodded. "What about-"

"Kakashi and Baku? I knew that they would try something like this years ago. Fortunately for both of them, they are far to valuable to kill over something like this."

She nodded again. The memory ended.

"Well fuck." Said Baku out loud. "That went way worse and yet better then we hoped...don't look so surprised: Danzo is still training you, that's the best that we could have asked for. We have to do a lot more training than expected though. You need to properly learn how to defend yourself otherwise you'll constantly be at his mercy. Now read my mind."

Instead of getting a few words, she saw nothing, but felt a mind. It was as if she was seeing her mind's eye get activated from an outside view. Was she seeing Baku sensei's memories?

Dark chakra gathered together , and formed a protective shield around the mind. Suddenly she was back in the real world.

"I call that a chakra shield. It repels most psychic attacks and is easy to repair. Today's lesson will be learning how to make one and resist my attacks."

Sasuke returned home in annoyance. Danzo sensei was insane.

Apart from the mind games (those he actually enjoyed: it made him feel smart), Danzo's training regime was just insane. He knew about restriction seals that would require a specific type of chakra manipulation to activate (and therefore stop restricting his movements), but seals that would change pattern at random intervals?

Annoyingly enough, Sakura became the most useful in these conditions. She would manage to learn the pattern almost instantly and was by his and Naruto's side in an instant.

Naruto was another surprise. He expected him to be the worst at this fight with his terrible chakra control, but apparently , you can overpower the seal if you have bullshit chakra levels. Naruto over powered the thing the entire time (something that surprised even Danzo, Sasuke noticed) and didn't even feel the changes. It was a new experience for him to be the most useless in the team, and Sasuke had enough. He applied the seal (that he had conveniently 'forgot to give back', not that the man seemed to mind) and instantly his arms were locked together and his legs became stiff. Sasuke grit his teeth, he would get this, so help him.

Dozens of clones were in the area, all of them doing nothing. Naruto in the clearing was concentrating on a pebble and a leaf. When Danzo sensei had mentioned extra training he had been filled with enthusiasm. Now he wished he never knew the man. He had expected all sorts of new jutsu's, and instead the man taught him one (that wasn't even an attack!) and made him do annoying chakra control exercise. Did he mention that there were over 10 clones in the trees, that would throw rocks at him at random intervals? There were clones in the trees and they would randomly throw rocks at him. Some bullshit about 'spacial awareness' (Naruto just figured that sensei was evil), not to mention the whooping he would receive if he didn't keep the chakra control exercise up.

Danzo sensei's logic was 'if he didn't have time to keep up the exercise, then he could defiantly pull off a Kawarimi. Without hand seals. HIM.

A whooshing in the air told him that a rock was coming. He jumped to the side, only to get hit by another. Fucking clones. Danzo sensei's small smirk that appeared every time he got hit didn't help.

A small breeze made her long hair levitate, and gave her sweat filled body the chills. This place was creepy.

Not a sound was made as she approached the gate, leading to a two story house. The architecture told her that it was old, and yet the paint indicated that it was new. Was it structured like that on purpose or did it get a paint job recently? She supposed it didn't matter.

The gate was locked, but it proved no trouble to her, as she just jumped over it. The garden was surprisingly absent of traps, and the front door was unlocked. She walked inside.

Being completely dark, despite the sun outside, Sakura activated her mind barrier and strained her ears. She would not get attacked. She would not fail another test.

She walked in the squeakyless hallway, that quickly lead to a dining room.

"Take a seat" Said Danzo beside her. She didn't scream at his sudden apperance.

"You walked in on guard. Good thinking." Danzo praised. She nodded happily in responce.

"I have no doubt that you can resist most mind attacks, and Baku will no doubt teach you how to attack. Since that part of the training is already dealt with, you will learn memory manipulation from me."

Sakura's breath hitched.

"Memories are easy to delete, but hard to manipulate. You have to master all five senses, plus every second in the memory takes a second to make in the real world; therefore the longer the memory, the longer it will take to change it" at this point he presented a deck of cards. "Another problem is that memories are processed differently by every living person. That's why you will start by modifying your own: I will show you these mixed cards in a random order, and later on you I will read your mind, and they will have a specific order." And with that the training started.


	5. chapter 5

Sakura groaned to herself as the technique failed yet again. The jutsu wasn't very useful in a fight, since it's only use was to throw a heavily condensed amount of lightning chakra, but Danzo-sensei said to learn it, so she obeyed.

 _"Maybe he gave me the wrong seals on purpose to waste my time"_ she thought to herself. It was a dumb thought, and yet it held: it is way easier to blame others than to accept yourself as the problem. " _He probably did this because I've gone so far with my mind abilities,"_ she grumbled to herself.

That was her most recent fantasy: being so good at her mind-related abilities, that Danzo himself feared her. It wasn't true of course; at the end of every lesson Danzo made sure to remind her how far behind she was, so that she wouldn't get cocky, and yet some part of her brain desperately kept thinking that. As she got better at using her ability.

She'd like to say that this was all because of her hard work, but using this different type of chakra was easy, instinctive even.

Her hand to hand combat skills were still pathetic (although Kakashi was making sure she got better) and her reserves out right refused to grow. Both of her teachers said that it was due to her age and genetics, and that training could only do so much, but it was seriously annoying. By the way they talked about it, it's 'easier' to go back in time and seal the kyuubi in her baby form, rather than grow kage-level reserves from nowhere.

She wouldn't give in so easily though: chakra was everything for a ninja, especially for kunochi: unlike their male counter parts, they didn't get naturally large reserves, and nature didn't give them any special benefit to their situation. It's as almost as if chakra hadn't been created alongside humans via evolution, and instead, had been given to them by someone.

"Huh, now I sound like a conspiracy theorist" she thought to herself. "Then again, isn't that what the church of the holy sage of the six paths says? That he gave everybody chakra and it became a genetic thing?" It was ridiculous of course: a single human cannot contain enough chakra for the entire population, and couldn't survive losing such a huge quantity. That was common knowledge. Having zero chakra isn't what kills a human, it's losing such a huge amount out of nowhere that hurts. Kind of like doing nothing for a week, than running for 2 days straight. An average ninja could definitely pull that off, if he trained a lot and found himself ready. A civilian, on the other hand, could never do something like that, and while she wasn't a medic, she could defiantly say that that civilian would die.

As the technique failed again, she decided to take a break and clear her head. Maybe a bit of rest is all she needed? It was lunch time anyway.

She got up and walked out of the training ground, heading straight to the 'Shiba shop'. A grocery store with prices that she could afford.

It took her a few minutes to arrive, and in the mean time she didn't meet anyone to tag along to eat lunch with, so she quickly went to the 'sandwich place' as she called it: a small part of the shiba shop where she could find pre-prepared food to make a sandwich out of, and not worry so much about whether or not she had enough money.

She decided to have tuna today, and with a quick wave to the man behind the counter, a civilian Inuzuka by the looks of it, she left the shop and headed to a nearby bench to eat.

The man made her think about what her life would be like if she quit the system and became a civilian. Her parents would certainly agree, as would the part of her that continually screamed that she wasn't good enough, but she couldn't give up. She owed the others that much.

Instead, she decided to think about her training. She couldn't get the jutsu done. Why?

She had excellent control, something that wasn't hard to achieve with her low reserves, plus the union of Danzo's and Kakashi's training regime. Why couldn't she get a basic jutsu out of the way?

"There is no such thing as mystery" Danzo's words seem to echo in her mind, "just lack of information."

Right. Information. So she either lacked information or had wrong information. "Or you're just not good enough" the anxiety within her whispered.

She banished those thoughts. It was a 1/3 chance. If it was true she'd deal with it, but if it wasn't, then she'd be just wasting time. Now, back to the jutsu.

What did she believe, based on the information she had?

"That I can't get a supposedly easy jutsu down" she thought with a frown. "So either it isn't easy (wrong information) or I don't have all/the right hand seals (lack of information). The jutsu only requires a few hand seals, so I can't be tough..." unless the technique required more hand seals.

She thought about that hypothesis with curiosity: hand seals are required to manipulate chakra, because manipulating the energy wasn't easy, nor natural. The only exception was dark chakra. An experienced shinobi however, could make it feel natural, simply by repetition. Shinobi still get a 'feel' when doing the jutsu though, so the act of using wrong hand seals would have gone noticed, for it would feel wrong. "Maybe I don't have all the seals then?" While that could be a possibility, it still didn't make sense: Danzo was programmatic first and foremost in his training regime. If he gave you a task, he wanted you to grow in completing the task, that's simply how he operated, therefore it would be strange to giver her the task of finding out the real hand seals in a jutsu, because he hadn't trained her at all in seal theory, let alone hand seal theory, which also requires heavy anatomical knowledge in the addition of seal theory.

So she had the right tools, yet still couldn't get the wanted results. She opened her pouch and retrieved her scroll again. There she read the seals necessary and the product of the jutsu:

The user will create a ball, seemingly put of lightning. It will be red in colour.

 _"That's it. Nothing else."_ She thought desperingly. She didn't know what she expected : she had already read the scroll after all. _"Ok, riddle: I have all the tools, I know how to use the tools, and yet I can't achieve what I want. Why is that?"_

She blinked. When you put it that way it seemed obvious: you're not using the right tools, obviously.

Suddenly her eyes widened in realization. _"Idiot!"_ She thought, face palming, the last of her sandwich falling on the ground. _"I've been using the wrong chakra all along!"_ It hadn't been a test! Danzo had simply overestimated her common sense.

She did the hand seals, this time using her 'other chakra'. The results where instantaneous: as she held out her hand, a bright red ball of something that looked a lot like red lightning appeared in her palm, without making a sound.

She did it! Forgetting her earlier tiredness and hunger, she raced back to Danzo to show the results.

"Took you long enough," he said with a sigh. "While I expected you to use the wrong chakra at first, I also thought that you would realise what you were doing was wrong, way faster than you actually did. At least you did it before the day ended."

"Sorry sensei, I didn't think about it because dark chakra seems so...natural? It would have never occurred to me to use hand seals."

"Dark chakra is only easy if you are using your naturally affinity. Everything else is almost impossible without seals."

She nodded. It made sense.

"Anyway, that exercise was just a test to understand the weird chakra better, you can go back to your regular exercises now."

"Yes sensei. What did the test say?"

It turns out that dark chakra was called as such, not because it was dark or anything, but because dark equals mystery, and the chakra was very mysterious.

Normal chakra for one, had a tendency to 'connect' itself into a certain type of matter, that being either solid, liquid, gas or plasma (Earth, water, wind, fire and lightning). That's what 'having an elemental affinity' means. It also had a tendency to turn into something that is easily imaginable to the user, but it wasn't a huge rule. People with water affinities for example, could easily control oil. It's just that water is usually more useful in any situation.

Dark chakra, on the other hand, is connected to things at random. Or at least on the surface: everyone was sure that there was a hidden rule that would make everything make sense, it was just hard to figure out. But anyway, for now nobody knew the underline rule. She, Baku and Danzo were psychics for example, while Kakashi seemed to have some sort of space/time affinity. Other humans that have activated the ability seemed to be able to do all sorts of things, like destroying matter, inhuman regeneration, and even impossible things like seeing the future. It was just insane.

Not to mention the activation of said chakra.

While normal chakra was present in every living being and was beneficial to use in every circumstance, just activating the dark chakra would kill most people. There was a higher survival rate for clans than civilians, but that could be attributed to a strong body.

Sakura, thankfully, had survived. Then again it was hard to say how much of it was luck to how much of it was natural: she had survived Itachi's jutsu and was on her feet in a single day, and had always been resistant to genjutsu's, and had always had a great memory.

Not to mention the fact that she couldn't remember Itachi's jutsu. Sasuke had said that he had seen the death of his clan hundreds of times over, while the anbu that had also gotten hit with said that he had been tortured for three days straight, and yet, Sakura remembered nothing. It was almost as if her brain knew that the information it had perceived wasn't useful, and had decided to eliminate it without a care in the world, just as if it were a mere dream (or better yet nightmare).

In the face of this, Kakashi's decision to risk her life made sense. She was still a bit sore over it though.

"The test was to see how easy/difficult it would be for you to create a self illusion, despite me specifically telling you that it was a lightning jutsu. Apparently none were found, and you used the jutsu without trouble, despite not understanding it."

She nodded. Seemed consistent. Another annoying/useful thing about dark chakra was that it acted as if it were a reflex, not an actual unknown energy that the body can use. While normal chakra required perfect mental discipline and incredible visualisation to use properly, dark chakra didn't even have to be understood to use. This test once again proved that, since she had genuinely thought she was creating lightning (that's why she used normal chakra in the first place), and instead, had created a 'self illusion' that created a red ball of seemingly silent electricity.

"At what level is your self illusion training up to?" Asked Danzo curiously.

"Pretty good all things considered. I can cut off whatever of my five senses I want, see light were there isn't any, or darker, without too much difficulty."

"Good. Can you guess why I wanted you to learn this? Surely removing a sense isn't beneficial."

"Well, there are certain cases where it can be useful, like if somebody used a flash seal or something, but my main guess is that I'm now going to learn how to transfer the effects to others."

"Excellent reasoning, but wrong. Learning to connect and manipulate other minds is a complex thing, for every mind is different. If you want to learn how to deep read another person for example, you would first have to read hundreds of minds, just to get used to the different ways your average person stores their memories and processes the world. Such a task is difficult and time consuming, despite your natural affinity. No, this exercise has the objective to learn to manipulate yourself to be better, to think fast, to remember anything perfectly, to not be distracted by pain during an intense battle." Danzo finished intensely. "The first step, which you seem to have completed, is to cut of whatever you want, on a whim. The next step, is to enhance it".

Sakura looked at the man with wide eyes. To say that she was speechless was a big understatement.


	6. Chapter 6

An annoying ringing sound quickly woke her up. She was in her room.

Automatically, as if her body was a mere puppet and the controller was an entity called 'routine,' she got dressed and went down stairs.

She ate, ignoring the sound of buildings on fire. Wait what-

Ah.

"Release!" She yelled, and suddenly her home disappeared and she was in front of Baku once more.

"Terrible," he said with a sigh, "but I suppose you learn better with practise."

She winced. Illusions weren't her strongest point...

...what was her strongest point again?

She suppressed the thought. She would get better. She would make herself better-

"Concentrate" he said and created another illusion.

This time, Sakura immediately activated her...she didn't have a name for it, and she probably should make one, but for now it was a 'self directed mind eye' that would allow her to scan her brain for illusions. It was way better then blindly relying on the release seal, which didn't give the user any information unless it worked and you escaped the jutsu. If it didn't work, you would have no idea if this was the real world or not since you didn't get any feedback.

Thanks to Baku, Sakura had made it a habit to activate this ability every time she woke up, regardless of where exactly that turned out to be.

She was in the real world. Nice.

She got ready for real this time, her thoughts wondering to her last training session with Baku, which was over a week ago.

"Where did he go?"

She put on her uniform- a real one, with a camouflage pattern and everything, ate, and headed to the forest of death.

Yes, the forest of death.

Danzo was an asshole. Don't ask.

It started of with simple, innocuous, survival training exercises, stuff like 'how to turn on a fire with minimal chakra' or 'how to make a temporary house out of the ground' (this had been incredibly annoying, for the jutsu had hundreds of variations for different terrains like rock, earth, sand, etc).

Simple stuff.

Then not so simple.

Hunting was easy with her mind eye, Naruto's clones and Sasuke's fire techniques. Alone without chakra? Not so much. With Danzo actively attacking them? It was hell.

Still, once they got the exercise down, Danzo usually changed regime. Usually.

She arrived at the usual gate via roof top and waited for the others.

She could have arrived less tired by walking, but Danzo would get mad at her for not scanning the surface thoughts of everyone around her, and not only was that tiring, it was uncomfortable.

These were her people's thoughts, sure, she wouldn't care about that if she was in an unfamiliar territory, but she couldn't bring herself to do that to people she was supposed to protect. It felt wrong.

So she found an alternative to not having Danzo glaring at her and obtaining what she wanted: staying away from people. It didn't really work for her teammates of course (although she did try to use the kyuubi as an excuse in the beginning, but such reasoning failed once Danzo informed her that the fourths seal stopped that and Danzo had already tested this).

After a bit Naruto arrived, his usual concerns regarding ramen and training were comforting to say the least, his shadow clone that he left behind as a quick replacement tool, following shortly, hiding by the bushes. It was an effective training tool, as Danzo had taught Naruto a variation of the shadow clone, one that gives the user it's memories after it dispels, upping Naruto's learning curve literally by hundreds.

Sasuke's were slightly more interesting, but only slightly. He was either thinking of something regarding jutsu's or something his therapist had said in her previous session (yes Danzo had ordered Sasuke to get a therapist and paid for it, in retrospect she didn't understand why it had taken so many years for it to happen, then remembered that Sasuke probably just never talked about it).

But time passed and Danzo didn't arrive. He was never late. She groaned as she read Sasuke's thoughts, confirming her suspicions, and sent them to Naruto.

A second later, the clearing exploded.

The three degree scars had hurt the first time, but these days she was ready and hardly got hurt. She scanned her surroundings, mind eye included, and noted that Naruto had replaced himself with the shadow clone, Sasuke made a quick shuishin and was now using an illusion to hide, while she had replaced herself with a pebble (something that her chakra control allowed her to pull off easily) and simply hid behind a bush.

She couldn't waste chakra on a simple illusion. Instead, she used her dark chakra which reserves had been growing astonishingly, and searched for Danzo, quickly sending his positions to her teammates. There was no need to talk on team 7.

The plan was devised instantly; Naruto attacked from all sides with his shadow clones, forcing Danzo to evade and meet either Sasuke or Sakura (since he was on a branch, he would either go up or down, were the two of them were waiting) and depending on were he'd go, Sakura would communicate that and the others would reach position instantly.

He met Sasuke and shot a powerful blow of air...one that was met head on with a fireball, which increased in size instead of deflating (a quick scan from Sasuke told her that fire can burn chakra if there was enough heat, and use that chakra to enlarge itself, wind was very good at this since after the spiritual resistance, fire would have to meet a physical resistance- nothing in this case since it was just a couple of thousand air molecules reshaped by chakra) so Danzo jumped to the side, were Naruto was.

His clones immediately went to help, just as Naruto created a few more to help out and create human slingshots.

Danzo released his sword.

Ok change of plan.

The clones were decimated instantly, Naruto nowhere to be found (he had replaced himself with a clone) and he was met by more clones which dodged instead of attacking (they had wires attached to their feet) but unfortunately Danzo saw right thorough the plan and sent Sasuke, the real one, not one of the henged ones that Naruto created, spiraling away.

How the hell- oh right, she wasn't the only psychic here. _"Stupid thing to forget"_ said Danzo in her head.

She decided to activate plan kamikaze.

A usual tactic that never really hurt Danzo, but brought time so it was still useful; she quickly escaped the area as Naruto created over 50 clones and after escaping, made them explode (another variant of the shadow clone technique that Danzo had taught Naruto).

Danzo disappeared.

She frowned. Had he actually ran away or was he just outside of her senses with a technique she didn't know about?

A roar answered her question. Oh for fu-

A huge...mole(?) appeared in the clearing. Although calling it a mole was incorrect: it looked like a weird fusion between a mole and an Armadillo. With fangs. That was spitting acid? Shit.

A quick wordless question (it had been difficult learn to comunicate telepathically without words and only by vague concepts and images, but Sakura could see why Danzo insisted so much- it was incredibly effective) and she received instant no's. Unfortunate. Sasuke didn't have enough chakra to use 'the wall of fire,' (simply put, a giant fire ball jutsu).

 _"A concept"_ said Naruto, who hadn't really gotten the hang of sending wordless concepts back _"what if we make the forest's trees fall down on it?"_

She considered this while dodging the swipes of the huge beast, no, it would probably go underground.

 _"Ah, makes sense. I could probably make enough water to drown it if we trapped it underground-"_

Which would require a huge amount of chakra (Danzo hated when they brute forced the problem).

The mole let out a huge wave of acid, which she escaped thanks to the substitution technique. The mole was then distracted by a couple of clones.

 _"Ok we can't kill it then, or at least I can't think of anything, what if we scare it?"_

Sakura nodded slowly, then replied mentally when she realises that Naruto couldn't see her from his position.

 _"I have a better Idea"_ said Sasuke smugly _. "Naruto, give me a downward boost."_ Sakura blinked as she understood the plan. That could work-

She looked up just in time to see Sasuke skid towards the ground, boosted by Naruto's wind jutsu.

Sasuke was once again in the clearing, his own swords released (nobody on team 7 carried their weapons, that would be stupid when something like seals existed) and struck the thing right on the head, clearly managing to pass the sort-of-scales protecting it. Sasuke channeled lightning chakra, using his swords to make a closed circuit, with the mole's brain acting as the 'lightbulb'. The thing tries to get attack Sasuke but it's claws didn't reach in time.

"Just for once I'd like a normal exercise," complained Naruto as he dropped to the floor, the giant mole thing having been killed.

"Agreed," Sakura replied.

Sasuke shrugged. Sakura could see, or better, read, that he didn't care.

"What now?" Asked Naruto curiously.

"Today you all learn how to deal with oversized animals."

They all turned their heads, Sakura too, (so he *does* have a technique to evade my mind sense) as Danzo approached them.

"The dangerous ones won't be killed so easily, becauae not only do they generally have chakra, some of them have an intelligent mind. As in "full human speech" intelligence, not 'really good instincts'. Which is why today you shall learn this." As he said that, he stretched his hand and tiny strings of chakra left his finger tips and attached themselves to a nearby rock.

"This ability is useful for moving human targets out of the way once the ability is learned."

He turned to Naruto, who was looking (and feeling) uncomfortable.

"You, on the other hand, shall have a chat with Hokage-sama, and learn an ability neatly called 'chakra chains'. I suspect you are the only one on the team who can learn this ability."

It was incredible how Danzo could deal with self-esteem, or better yet, not ruin it.

"Yes sensei!" Naruto replied cheerfully and disappeared in a shuishin.

"Now there are other things to know, like how bigger means more potential energy, which also means more damage when falling-

As far as days went, Sakura's was packed.

After finishing for the day in the forest of death, she quickly went to the hospital. She didn't know how much more of this regime she could continue, since it was simply too tiring, but she would continue until she was an effective group medic. As the one with the best chakra control, it was her duty.

It was things like these that made her secretly grateful that Baku had disappeared. With him here she'd have to train in her sleep. Literally. She still missed the lessons.

She jumped on her bed as she arrived home. She would earn her right to enter the sheets after she had a shower.

Sakura closes her eyes and thought.

She had been making a lot of progress (Danzo said so, something that he wouldn't do if she really didn't deserve it) but it didn't feel like much. Sure, she was useful in battle, incredibly useful, but she wasn't much without her teammates.

It's funny how as she finally reached her objective, she made a new one.

Plus her friends. She had not forget how they helped her: she would repay that, somehow.

The thought pattern quickly reminded her of the original plan. Get in contact with a demon. She needed a boost.

Originally she was going to have a chakra boost, but being a medic showed why that was a terrible idea. It was like being a rock and forcing said rock to become a sword. It would never be as effective as a steel sword. What would really work is making a catapult and setting the rock on fire. That would make damage.

Her dark chakra was useful, but she needed to overpower people's normal chakra for the best things (changing memories, cutting off senses, etc) which would be tremendously useful when she would have an unconscious target, but not really useful for battle. At best she could read surface thoughts (even a deep read required overpowering her opponent) which at first made her think that she would have a sort-of-sharingan but it turns out that that was not the case.

Unless someone specifically thought of a strategy in the midst of a battle (most people simply attacked and relied on instinct, especially if they've got the skills to back it up) it wouldn't work. She could try to understand vague concepts, but she didn't get Naruto's yet, and he was actively trying to make her understand.

All in all she just needed an edge. So she got out her recently bought bingo book as she laid on the bed and started to read. Why make something new if she could just copy the idea?

A lot of A-S rank shinobi had an edge, wether it be weird skills, a cool weapon (the most dangerous like Kisame had both) or a bloodline. She needed something like that.

Fuinjutsu had seemed promising, until she discovered that nobody really knew anything and the most dangerous knowledge was kept hidden. Annoying.

She looked upon a weird entry. 'Six samurai'. One had an arrow (really? An arrow?) another a katana, another not one not two, not even three, but four swords and four arms...

The final looked weird and used some sort of exploding jutsu that reminded her of deidara. That's right, bombs.

A sudden idea came to her.

She couldn't experiment with already existing and easily accessible fuinjutsu like smoke bombs, flash bombs, storage items etc, because the materials cost too much, but she didn't have to use fuinjutsu! She could use other materials!

She raced to the library.

The library was closed. Obviously, it was 9 p.m.

That didn't exactly stop her.

It was easy to look within her memories to see who was the liberian, she would go regularly to the library after all.

Where the person lived, was another question entirely.

Still, said person probably lived far away. Hopefully. Slowly, she sneaked to a back door, she didn't have any 'unlocking' techniques, but thankfully she didn't need one as she created a manipulated a bit of earth and used it to fit inside the lock. After pushing everything through with her chakra, she turned it into the side, opening the door. It was common practise for ninjas to have security against these things, but this was a civilian library.

She walked inside, chilled by how creepy the dark room looked and checked a fee dozen titles under the 'E' section, and found nothing that she wanted. She looked under the 'B' too, but nope.

Fine, she would find out some other way.

"Sakura, what the hell are you doing here?"

She yelped. She forgot to scan the area!

Slowly, she turned around, but to her relief it was just Naruto. Said blond was stating at her in confusion. She guessed that it made sense- it wasn't like her to do illegal things after all.

"Just looking, why are you here?" She replied.

The boy shrugged. "Beats me, you're the one who called me."

What? She scanned her memories and realised that she had called him, on impulse, when she walked into the room. She chastised herself for once again asking Naruto to do everything but she guessed that is was useless: the blond wasn't exactly unwilling to help her.

"Sorry I-"

"Naa it's fine," he said with a wave of his hand. "I didn't have anything to do anyway."

She giultily stared at the floor. It was after 9 p.m. at night.

"What were you looking for anyway?"

"Anything that explodes. I figured it would be a huge boost."

"Why didn't you just use seals?"

"They cost too much."

"No, they don't, you're just buying top quality stuff. "

"Huh?"

"It's not like normal pieces of paper and normal ink don't work, it's that they are less chakra conductive. They still work though, plus you can use your own chakra for ink."

She blinked in surprise. The shock making her come to attention fully.

It was not surprising that Naruto knew so much about seals- he had one on his stomach after all, she didn't have a tenth of his natural curiosity and even s _he_ would want to know everything possible in his shoes.

She winced, realising that she would once again, rely on others for power. "Would you mind teaching me?"

"Nope!"

It turns out that Naruto had been practising a lot in fuinjutsu.

Which made sense in hindsight. All he had to do was just create clones that didn't give any feedback, make random seals and let them go in an abandoned area to teat them out. Sometimes they died, sometimes they didn't. When they did, he wrote that down and tried again with different variations, when they didn't the clones reported to him directly and said what happened.

It also turned out that Danzo was helping him. No surprise there.

He taught her how to make chakra become ink and then instructions how to shape it, which she mastered quickly (no surprise's there either) and then made seals of her own. Naruto's clones tested then of course.

"Wow I never managed to make pink explosions!" Exclaimed Naruto with a laugh.

She laughed too. "Oh wait till you see the dark-pink ones!" She blinked. Dark?

She channeled her dark chakra. Into a seal. What would happen then?

"Hey test this out!"

The clones went. They waited. The clones came back.

She tried a different variation. Nothing.

"Maybe you need more chakra?" Said Naruto tentatively.

She put more dark chakra. Still nothing.

"What the hell are you doing that's not making it explode? The pattern always worked for me!"

"Weird," she said to herself. "No reaction at all "

"What the hell are you too up to?"

They both turned around in shock. What?!

"Sasuke!" Yelled Naruto. "What are you doing here?!"

"Sakura called me." He replied calmly.

Everyone turned to her. She once again searched through her memories, but was actually confused this time. She didn't call for Sasuke.

She looked at her teammates and searched through his memories, trying to understand. Sasuke unconsciously put up resistance at first, but stopped when she realised what she was doing.

 _He grumbled to himself as the technique didn't work. What is it with water jutsu's and not working? Did some water god hate him or something, seriously! It wasn't adding up-_

 _A sudden 'boom' was heard inside his head, that was Sakura. He could recognize her presence instantly these days. It took him a while to understand what was going on though, since the 'signal' if he were to call it that disappeared instantly. Perhaps it was a voiceless concept? Was she in trouble and had been knocked out?_

 _Another boom, but this time it he got it, realising that there was no order. Weird. He activated his sharingan and saw a weird cloud of Sakura's weird purple chakra. Looking, he saw the center of it wasn't too far from here. What a weird way to call him. Perhaps she was experimenting?_

"Huh" Sakura replied out loud.

"So?" Asked Sasuke impatiently. He opened his mouth again to ask a question but stopped as Sakura explained her night raid and later experiments.

The three looked at each other in confusion, none of then making heads or tails of what could have caused this.

"Perhaps it's a weird requirement for the seal?" Suggested Naruto. "Like dark Sakura wants us to put our chakra as well-"

"For the last time Naruto, there's no suck thing as Dark Sakura. 'Inner Sakura' are just my real thoughts, not an evil subconscious personality-"

 **"Maybe that's what she wants you to think."** He replied in a creepy tone of voice.

She shook her head, cursing the day that she tried to bring the two of them in her mindscape. "But it's an interesting suggestion. Let's see what happens if we put all three of our chakra's inside the same seal."

It turned out that Sasuke and Naruto couldn't access their dark chakra (which was a shame since she could have instantly repaid her debts with interest if it would have worked, but was also nice since that meant her already overpowered teammates didn't get another power boost) normally, but if they dumped in their normal chakra, it acted weirdly when mixed with hers. They still could find the kunai that had disappeared one day when Naruto threw a chakra enchanced kunai against her when she had been flaring her dark chakra to read his thoughts.

They used a different seal, one that Naruto had found out previously that wouldn't blow up if three clones channeled their own chakra at the same time and watched curiously from afar.

The preformed the 'release' hand-seal at the same time.

A massive explosion took and then there was darkness.

An annoying ringing sound was the first thing that Sakura heard when she woke up.

Aku-

She opened her eyes and realised that she was blind. Oh wait, no she wasn't-

aSa-

Slowly, the shapes around her became objects, colours started to transform into others-

Akura-

When would the ringing stop?

"SAKURA!"

Huh?

"Sakura!" Said Naruto as she her brain started to work again. What?

Explosions could be heard. She looked up and saw Sasuke breathe a massive fireball. Why was he-

"C'mon we have to get put of here!"

She was pulled to her feet her long distance vision was still a bit blurry but she could make out some ugly looking things in the distance.

"Who are we fighting? Where did they come from?" She asked, too confused to be scared.

Naruto grimaced. "Demons."

What?

As they ran, Sasuke, along with several dozen Naruto's spotted them and leapt to their side.

"You know what to do!" Naruto shouted at them. Sasuke remained, but the clones didn't.

"Guys can someone please explain what's going on!" Sakura shouted, her brain suddenly catching up to reality.

"It starred when we woke up," explained Sasuke between breathes, "we were in this weird wasteland surrounded by nothing, so we looked around."

"We guessed that we're here thanks to the explosion" continued Naruto. "We found the missing kunai" as he said this, he lifted the not-missing-anymore-weapon.

"So we decided to do the obvious," said Sasuke, "go home the back we came, except that it didn't work and suddenly there were monsters."

"It's probably my fault" said Naruto, voice filled with guilt. "The Hokage warned me that kyuubi's chakra was constantly pumped in my system, but I didn't really listen."

Sakura remained silently in all of this. What could she possibly say?

They continued running on the rocky terrain, the monsters hot on their heals, probably ready to murder them as soon as they catched up. The sprint stopped when they arrived at the edge of a cliff.

Sakura took the time to look around. The sky was dark red, lit in every direction despite there being no sun. There were flying...she'd call them 'rocks' except they were huge, closer to small islands actually. The platform that they were currently on had two mountains, one close to them and one in the far distance. If there were more then two, she couldn't see them, for there appeared to be a red mist in the distance. The monsters were gaining on them.

"What now?" She asked.

"We fight." Said Naruto as the same tine Sasuke said "we die."

The two looked at each other. Ready to defend their opinions, before Sakura quickly shut them up telepathically.

They didn't have time for this.

Her head hurt, the dark chakra hurt to use, it was like someone had forced her to run a marathon she was ready for and now demanding her to stand, despite the pain in her legs. She did it anyway.

Problems were pointed out and creative solutions were said in response. Option, tactics, the sort of thing that they usually used against Danzo. Unless Naruto had enough chakra/strength for a human bridge, they weren't getting out of here. The terrain could not be used for jutsus, so no hiding underground/making a home in the side of the cliff either.

Scratch that, they couldn't even wall walk. Normal chakra was useless.

That made her think of something. They still had dark chakra. After quick confirmation, Sasuke's eyes could still be activated and Naruto could still use the Kyuubi's chakra.

That didn't mean much. Sasuke was too tired to fight, as the fireball from earlier took a lot out of him (he had to waste more then double the usual amount of chakra to make half it's usual size, making something that huge had cost him a lot) and normal chakra was basically useless. Naruto had bearly practised with chakra chians and could 't deal with a dozen monsters and his only experience with kyuubi chakra had been for a full minute when Danzo made him unlock it (he had been alone and knocked unconscious by some wood thing very quickly and hadn't used it since) so it was unreliable. Sakura's dark chakra was almost finished for the day.

The monsters almost made it up to them.

Urgent thoughts increased. Can't use chakra for bombs because they wouldn't be any effective, can't use the kyuubi's because A) Naruto couldn't control it B) they would just have more problems. What Sakura would do for a bit of fire power right now...

She blinked. Fire power? Hang on a sec.

"Guys i've got an idea- she started, then stopped when she realised that she was wasting time. She thought furiously, trying to give instructions as fast as possible.

They couldn't use normal chakra, but they didn't need to. Sakura drew the last of her dark chakra to the floor and made a seal that had killed the shadow clones making it, by absorbing them as well as their chakra. Clones were chakra constructs after all.

Naruto instantly knelt to the floor, and drew upon the kyuubi's chakra, which was quickly absorbed by the seal. His eyes did go red but his teeth remained the same, something that Naruto said was good. The monsters were here.

"Hold them off for a bit" said Naruto in a half growl.

Sasuke released his swords, his chakra basically nearly empty, while sakura brought out a few kunai with exploding tags. Not good.

Thankfully the monsters that had caught up were also the weakest/less armoured and were easily killed.

Now for the hard part.

In the distance, what looked like a fat dragon without wings approached with a slow run.

There were things that looked like a weird combinations between a snake and a wolf, and this giant hairy spider/scorpion thingy that was absolutely disgusting to look at. Those were the first two.

"Naruto?!"

"A bit more!"

Ah shit.

They were getting close.

"Naruto!"

"Almost!"

 _Fuckfuckfuckfuck-_

"Naruto!"

"I'm basically done!"

The dragon thing was as big as a house, while the other bug combo thing was at least 4 times in size. They weren't the biggest.

"Naruto!"

"Run!"

And suddenly a huge explosion let out as another monster, way bigger then earlier appeared and quickly ate the other two. The remaining monsters died in seconds.

Now for the _actual hard part._

A giant tentacle thingy, attached to the main body of... _that_ and was easily the size of a castle which had Sakura firmly deciding not to look at, attacked. Naruto still in his semi-kyuubi state created clones, more clones to catapult the previous ones, and extra for a distraction.

The thrown clones exploded in the things face, making it scream, it hunched over attacking them again.

"Naruto! Sasuke! Now!" She screamed out loud since she had used up her dark chakra.

Sasuke didn't do much, but Naruto unleashed some chakra chains and pulled. He could only manage two for now, and they were incredibly weak, but the giant thing was already hunched over. It fell to the ground. For a normal person, a fall wouldn't have hurt much. For a thing that big? She could hardly imagine. The fall made shockwaves. And the earth(?) rumbled, rocks were everywhere.

"Run!" She shouted needlessly, for Sasuke and Naruto were already running literally for their lives.

"Ok, we can't run forever" said Naruto said as he finally sat down, destroyed. Running for hours does that to people.

"The damn thing is still on our tails" said Sasuke with a frown.

Sakura nodded, making another problem as a solution rarely worked, but in this specific case, it did. "We only have to run for a while and then get out of here. Remember what Danzo said about beasts?"

"The bigger they are the harder they fall?" Naruto supplied 'helpfully.'

"No, I've already done that."

"The bigger they are the uglier they are?"

"No Naruto," she said with a sigh, "the bigger they are the slower they are. That thing doesn't even have legs.

From were they were sitting, they could see the full size of it. Sakura had never felt so afraid. It looked like an upwards snail with dozens of tentacles. It 's main body was covered with horns. Sickly yellow green slime was oozing from...somewhere. it was disgusting.

While normal chakra seemed to not work on the outside, it worked on the inside. It was thanks to naruto and his literal hundreds of shuishins that they had managed to escape.

"Any ideas on how we get out of here?" Asked Naruto.

She shook her head. Resting was the priority for now.

"Sakura, why does your mind thing work here?" Asked Sasuke curiously.

"Probably because it's an internal chakra." She replied automatically.

"That's what I thought too, but you don't really teleport your thoughts, you exclaim them like a radio. That is an outside thing."

Sakura shrugged. It was probably because the chakra was different. Or maybe it was less effective and she didn't notice.

"What I would like to know is how we got here. A random explosion, seriously? She yawned. "Ok nevermind I'm too tired to think. Who wants to take first watch?"

In the end Naruto decided to remain awake, despite her protests that he was the one who had done more, so she fell asleep.

"Sakura Haruno." Said a calm voice.

She was instantly awake. Huh?

It was the smell that caught her first, the smell of a hospital. What the-

The third hokage of the hidden leaf was looking at her.

She instantly straightened herself in respect. What-

"You have been accused of demonic experimentation. I would like to know what happened."

 _"WHAT?"_ Wait a minute, was this one of Baku's tests? She activated her mind eye-

It wasn't a test.

"I don't-" she stopped. What had happened?

Seeing her confused look, shinobi no kami decided to explain. "I had reports on a few explosions last night and when my men arrived, a huge portal opened and sucked you in. We searched for hours until someone woke up Danzo and he simply summoned you here. You, Sasuke's and Naruto's reverse were basically empty and had trace of demonic chakra, yes, all three of you."

But-

"We'd like to know what happened."

She blinked. She couldn't remember.

"I don't re-" but that was weird, something had happened, she had so much lingering fear that she felt like she should be in danger- ah, someone had blocked her memories. Danzo had warned her of this. Now the question was, who? The Hokage? Danzo? Whoever had done it wanted something kept secret, so she decides to act her part and figure out what exactly had happened later.

"I don't remember."

"Hm, I see. I suppose you wouldn't mind Inoichi confirming that?" He 'asked.'

 _As if you haven't already tried_. "Sure."

The 'interview' took a while, but after a bit she was free to go. She immediately went home. A private area would have been better but she didn't want to raise further suspicion, plus she felt really tired. Danzo would either ask/explain now or wait for tomorrow. There was no hurry. She activated her mind eye-

"What happened today?" She said, seemingly to no one. No reply.

 _"Well?"_

 _"Ask directly like this the next time."_

 _"Yes sensei."_

 _"To put it mildly, one of your teammates has a space/time affinity, which interacted wrongly with the seal. The kyuubi defiantly has something to do with it."_

 _"Yes but what did I do-"_ she stopped as suddenly her memories returned. What.

 _"That, my student, was hell. Or more precisely, were demons come from."_

 **I'm still alive and had one of the biggest writer's block in the history of ever. I was supposed to do the chunin exams _but I didn't want too_. It's been over used, it's boring to write let alone read. so I said "you know what? _fuck_ the chunin exams!" so then I asked myself how do they miss it. A mission? Didn't seem original. But then why would they leave konoha? so yeah, *spoiler alert* they haven't missed out on it yet, but they will the next time. Because fuck the chunin exams, I'll make them chunin some other way I don't care. *spoiler alert end* I should start writing regularly now, (no promises) but I'm reasonably confident that I will post something at least once a week.**


	7. chapter 7

"Hell? You mean where demons torture humans as an atonement for their actions?" Sakura exclaimed in fear.

"Of course not, there's no such thing, when I say 'hell' I mean the plane of existence were the sage of the six paths sealed the horrors of the old world. Does the academy no longer cover this?" He asked in disgust.

She shook her head.

"Simply put, the world has more to fear then bijuu's, the sage knew humanity wouldn't survive, so he sealed them away. That's what the church of the holy sage says."

"And what do you think exactly?" She asked carefully.

"That the sage somehow invented 4th dimensional sealing in his lifetime, made an S rank chakra conductor and sealed most of the worlds 'demonic' chakra inside. Do not give me that face, I do not believe in things without evidence for the first hokage himself talked to the sage- no, I have not gone insane, stop looking at me like that, I saw Hashirama's memories first hand and he was not a physic, nor was his brother one. As for the sealing theory, that's the fourth hokage's idea, I merely think it makes sense."

"But what is it? Also do you know why demons appeared when Naruto used the kyuubi's chakra?"

Danzo nodded. "All bijuu's are different from humans thanks to a fundamental quality: awareness. While humans are self aware after thousands of years of evolving, gather enough demonic chakra into one place and no matter what you have it can think. That's how certain swords have self-awareness and why demons can outsmart humans despite never receiving a formal education. Also while I am not fully sure, I suspect that the demons were simple creations and not summonings. The equivalent of a shadow clone jutsu made by the kyuubi."

Sakura opened her mouth. The reply 'but they didn't disappear in a puff of smoke' was covered by the more urgent reply 'but how is that even possible' but both questions were blocked by an even scarier realization 'the kyuubi can affect the outside world?!?' so in the end, she remained silent. Thankfully Danzo could read her mind.

"There's much theory you still have to study in order to participate in this conversation. Just know that Hokage-sama himself made the judgement after seeing Naruto's memories-"

"Wait what? I thought you got rid of everyone's memories!"

"It was by the hokage's orders. The politically inclined are getting the wrong ideas, had they decided to make a fuss you would have possibly lost your career if not your life. Always remember that the previous generation has met the kyuubi." She shuddered in response and nodded. "Where can I study these things?"

Danzo let out no physical reaction, but his hesitation to answer was enough for her to know that he was secretly grinning to himself.

Danzo was wrong. He said that she had been to hell. She had, but she was doing it *now*.

Stacks of incredibly boring books were laid on top of the other. Dozens of shelves filled to the brim with books. Hundreds of scrolls were just lying around. Had this been any other situation, she would have been thrilled in entering the Hokage's secret library.

As it was, she was ready to murder someone.

She couldn't even read what she chose, for some asshole with a stick would hit her hand if she got the wrong book. The bastard would _literally smile at her_.

She would call him by name but that would give him to much importance. He was probably an anbu or trying to be one, because she had never seen his incredibly pale face before. Although no anbu dresses like he did-

"Concentrate." Said his flat voice.

She turned the page to what she was reading. He wasn't a telepath, thankfully, but he was still incredibly observant, so she had no choice (well, she could always leave, but her sheer curiosity would never allow her to consider such an option) so she continued to read. She frowned to herself as she thought of Naruto's 'turn negative into positive' mentality. What would could she do? She suppressed the urge to grin.

That's how she spent most of the day. By the end of it she was pretty sure she got most of the pieces together.

Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke went to the clearing from yesterday. It was once again night time.

"Hey that's weird, there's nobody here." Said the blond.

"That's good you mean," retorted Sasuke, "otherwise we would have trouble...still, why here out of all places?"

Sakura grinned. "Simply put, it's the last place they will be expecting us." She sat down. "Ok guys get comfortable because I have a lot of explaining to do."

Her skill at sending mental messages had progressed so much that she almost didn't waste any dark chakra anymore.

Despite that, she was incredibly tired once she was done.

Apparently, seals didn't only have to be put on pieces of paper. When they were that is called 'two dimensional sealing' and when they are applied on 3D objects like the fourths rubix cube, that's 'three dimensional sealing'. Nobody had ever been capable of using 4th level, in fact, nobody even suspected it was possible until the previous Hokage suggested it.

The next question that had been asked was 'how did the kyuubi summon monsters.'

That hadn't been easy to explain.

For starters it didn't. Another shocking fact that she discovered, was that the natural energy around humans used to be demonic chakra. Apparently the sage of the six paths found a way to take the toxic part out, and had sealed it.

"Yeah but what's that got to do with-"

"I haven't finished Naruto."

Demons, or technically bijuu's, were simply massive amounts of this energy put together. Apparently the sage couldn't seal everything away for some reason (the fourth thought that it was a hint at the nature of the seal) so the bijuu's could control it quite easily.

Thankfully for them, the seal stopped most of it, but that didn't make the kyuubi innocuous. When they had gathered his energy into the outside world, his murderous intent transformed the energy in a miniature bijuu, with Sasuke's chakra 'splitting' the creations at first (probably: Sakura didn't really know why the first explosion created multiple ones while the final one only one huge one, but considering that Naruto had been alone, the hypothesis made sense).

"Sooo why are we here exactly?" Asked Naruto. "Because we could have easily talked about it in my room, or Sasuke's."

She smiled. "I want to do it again."

This statement was met with looks of confusion and shock, with both boys looking at her as if she was crazy.

"Don't you guys get it? We could make weapons on the par with S-rank shinobi!"

"Sakura we could get killed-" started Naruto, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder by Sasuke, who had a glint in his eye.

"I have several questions before accepting. One: were do we get the weapons? Two: how do we get back Three: will we be discovered?"

She smiled as Naruto let out a "what!" and "traitor!" for she had thought of those things. She took out a sealing scroll and throwed it at him. "As for the getting back, that's the difficult part." She took out another scroll. "I asked Danzo-sensei if we could have one of those emergency seal things, but someone needs to summon it. Since Naruto has the most chakra and the kyuubi, I think he should remain to summon us back."

Naruto frowned, but nodded.

"As for the discovered part, that's pretty easy: we just need to set up a chakra barrier. And while I don't get the theory behind how they work, I did simply copy and paste what the fourth wrote and I think we can trust him."

The asshole from today had been very inconvenient now, but all she had to say was 'I'm afraid of my teammate' and he relented. She was worried that the excuse wouldn't work but apparently he knew that Naruto housed the kyuubi.

They set up to work.

Naruto was outside the barrier of course, for after he had put his part of chakra inside the bomb, there was no need to keep him on the inside. The bomb was activated and they disappeared.

It was curious, Naruto thought, he had expected for a portal or something to appear but nope, they just disappeared in a flash of chakra. The seal held and no anbu appeared, perfect. Now if all went according to plan, they wouldn't even encounter monsters, for it was the kyuubi that creates them. The question that maybe going back to were a humongous-but-not-quite-bijuu-levels monster had been raised was really a good idea, but Sakura reasoned that the huge monster would be an easy-to-evade threat, plus no other monsters would be found because it would kill them. (They didn't know if they had initially been alone by luck or if that place was always desolated).

Naruto waited an hour, then summoned them back.

What returned was an immensely bleeding Sasuke and an armless Sakura.

What.

There were times, Danzo thought to himself, were he wondered if he should just murder every ninja alive who knew sealing and be done with it.

He had _specifically_ allowed Sakura to learn about these things so she'd realise the dangers of her actions, so she'd never touch seals again.

He overestimated her common sense/greed for power.

 _Of course_ she transformed the entire warning thing into a motivating factor to mess with demonic chakra even more.

He had initially wanted to simply prohibit her from doing anything related to with demons, but had stopped himself: Hiruzen had learnt the hard way via Orochimaru that when you say 'no' it just makes the subject even more interesting. So he had thought to do the 'smart' thing and let her realise it on her own. In hindsight he had been an optimistic fool. It was a shame though, for the idea wasn't a bad one (one out of the several weapons had actually became sentient, interestingly enough, it was leaking of dark chakra but a different type from Sakura's) but the how she put her plans into action was needlessly reckless. That was why he had been the first to demand her expulsion from the shinobi corps. She was already too dangerous, best get rid of her.

No not literally rid of her, she was a psychic after all; those abilities were far too useful to kill her, so she could be a counter spy or something.

She didn't take it well. Good, it would send the right message to her teammates who weren't as guilty because it wasn't their idea, but they didn't stop her either. They wouldn't be becoming chunin for a while.

Well, Sasuke _had_ actively helped her but he was the last Uchiha, they couldn't exactly let him be a civilian. He would be punished in some other way.

Now, to study the weapon that they had confiscated from Sakura-

She let the fresh batch of tears out. Again.

She felt so much loathing right now she didn't know were to start. Scratch that _she did_ know were to start.

As she lay on the bed trembling out of anger, she thought about all the stupid decisions she had made. It had all started with the 'turn negative into positive' mentality: how could she turn a boring afternoon into a cool one? By making her research useful for later. What did she want? To become stronger by any means.

It had been easy from there.

Problem was, she didn't think enough. She had been aware on some level that if everything went to hell she wouldn't be a shinobi anymore (Danzo had indirectly said that if she would mess with these 'demonic' stuff again the previous generation which were heavily biased against these things would end her) but in the rush of finding a way to obtain what she wanted, she rationalized to herself, saying things like 'if I'm not a shinobi anymore that means that mum and dad will be happy so that's fine' and not 'hang on a minute, if mum and dad hear me messing with demonic things they will be forever disgusted.'

In hindsight, it was obvious that it had been a terrible idea.

But she hadn't thought of the consequences, not really. The optimistic biases had once again taken control. She had thought that nothing would go wrong...and well, had she been more careful, it would have worked. That was arguably the worst part.

Had she tried it on something low-scaled first, had she been _less greedy_ and simply more sensible, she could have tried it on something small like a pen first.

Then it would have exploded, because inanimate objects are easily destroyed by something with self-awarness, then it would have occurred to her to channel part of her chakra too. Or at least study seal theory before trying anything.

She didn't even need to experiment it: the fourth hokage had already shown what to do, if she had just _thought of her teammate instead of herself_ but no, she only thought about her own desires.

That's how she almost got killed: by a bunch of 2-3 meter monsters exploding from weapons, ready to kill her.

It was only thanks to Naruto that they were still alive.

She continued to cry. Stupid. That's what she was.

And if that hadn't been bad enough, Danzo had comunicated just earlier that she wasn't a shinobi anymore. That's when her parents had came and yelled at her. She didn't want to go home.

She had no life as a shinobi. She had no life as a civilian. What now?

Naruto groaned to himself as he left Sasuke's side. The jerk had been annoyed by what had happened, but seemed thoughtful more than anything.

Sakura wasn't allowed visitors yet but by tomorrow that would change and he'd knock some sense into her. He had no idea how he'd keep her into the shinobi corps but he would-

His thoughts were interrupted as he saw Sakura walk by. Hang on a minute what was she doing out of bed?

He watched her escape from the hospital and into the night. Huh?

"Sakura! Where are you-"

She stopped and turned, angrily.

"Lower your voice," she hissed but without the usual anger that his stupidity brought out. She seemed more defeated than anything.

 _"Actually, don't talk at all,"_ said a voice inside his head.

 _"What are you doing? Where are you going? Shouldn't you be in bed?"_

 _"The nurses don't want anything to do with a 'demon-lover' like me, so after they bandaged me up, they left."_ As she comunicated this, she raised her left arm (or what remained at least).

 _"That doesn't answer the 'where are you going' question"_ he observed.

She hesitated. _"I can't stay here anymore, I have no future as a civilian, or as a shinobi."_

 _"Sakura! You can't leave! This is your home! What about me? What about Sasuke!?"_

 _"I'm sorry, I know it's selfish, but I can't live there anymore Naruto, I'm not strong like you, i'd rather kill myself then live here a day longer."_

 _"You don't even know if it's that bad! Most people don't even know you!"_

Seriously not even a full day had passed (well, technically it had, but she had been in hospital for most of the time).

 _"It doesn't matter Naruto: the most important people know and everyone except for you is looking at me with disgust. You can take it, you're strong like that. I'd rather die."_ It certainly raised her appreciation of Naruto's willpower: how he managed to survive under those stares everyday was an incredible mystery to her. She sent more vague concepts about her mental state, something that was making him visibly hesitate. This hurt her a lot and he now knew it.

 _"Sakura-_

 _"I'm serious. If you try/ succeed to take me back I will just kill myself at the first opportunity. Or try to escape again._

 _"You could die out there!"_

 _"What do you prefer? A probable death or a certain one?"_

He winced. She already knew the answer to that.

 _"Well?"_

 _"I'm conflicted,"_ he admitted. He then walked right to her.

 _"Naruto I'm serious-"_

 _"I know, and that's why I'm helping."_

She would have laughed. _"You expect me to believe that?"_

 _"No. I except you to read my mind."_

She did. He wasn't lying: he honestly would rather help her escape then see her die. _"I honestly didn't expect you to change your mind. My mental model of you would try to punch the answers in me."_ It made her a bit guilty.

 _"I don't like the idea of fighting a cripple- sorry, I shouldn't have said that, anyway it's mostly Danzo that insists that I have to think things through, especially if I want to become hokage."_

She started crying again. It was too much.

"There there," he said and hugged her. She didn't move.

As he hugged her he made a hand seal behind her back and several clones appeared. "You know what to do," he told them.

At her questioning look, he mentally explained.

Apparently as far as strength was concerned, he had also thought of leaving Konoha. Mostly when Mizuki told him that nobody loved him and that he was the kyuubi. But that had been stopped thanks to Iruka.

The question of how to leave a village full of anbu was still in question though. Sasuke would probably have the skill to pull it off if he chose to do so, but Naruto would have to wait for a mission to escape.

The shadow clone plus substitution technique changed that. The several clones had already hendged into random anbu of course, so civilians wouldn't question and they could disappear into a puff of smoke if they actually did get discovered by other anbu.

"They're in place," he told her. "If you have second thoughts-"

"I don't."

"...I understand. I guess. Goodbye Sakura."

Another tear fell as she felt the pull of the substitution. "Goodbye Naruto."

And in several puffs of smoke that lasted a few seconds at most, she was outside.

Danzo frowned from within his secret hideout as the sword was failed for the millionth time to be diagnosed. It was a simple, not curved, wakizashi. Why was it so difficult to diagnose?

"Sir." Said one of his agents. "We suspect that it has a dark affinity, so we are activating an experimental power fuse to see if it converts the chakra into it's speciality-"

"Approved."

The proper barriers were put in place and the infusion was given. There was a sudden flash and the sword disappeared. Oh shit.

Outside of konoha, Sakura yelped in alarm as a sword randomly appeared at her feet. Huh?

"Sir! We suspect that the sword has returned to the alternate dimension-"

"Do not be so hasty in your conclusions!" Inwardly Danzo was grimacing. That was highly probable actually. Out of all the affinities it just _had_ to have a space/time one. He left for the apartment that the Uchiha was currently in. Sakura had a psychic affinity so it made no sense for the sword to go to her, but the Uchiha could have a hidden space/time affinity that the sword had 'captured'...

Sakura smiled to herself as she placed the sword in it's sheath that she had just made out of ninja wire. She remembered this sword, it's the one that Sasuke had tried channeling chakra in with his sharingan activated once the other weapons had exploded into monsters, so she used her dark chakra out of desperation. Strangely enough it worked, in fact it was the only weapon that had 'survived.'

Danzo scanned the apartment. Nope, nothing. He frowned: the weapon was definitely inside the other dimension...

Tomorrow he would convince Sakura to channel dark chakra into a seal so Naruto and Sasuke's hidden affinity would activate, allowing him to transport to the other dimension. Yes, he'd send a full platoon of anbu there...

No, it wouldn't be good to show the girl that she was still connected to the shinobi world. Especially if she managed to piece what he was doing with her dark chakra. He would ignore her for a week and then inquire about her were abouts. Then he'd make another plan to get her chakra.

Sakura smiled to herself as she was immersed into he surroundings while leaping from tree to tree, Konoha disappearing into the distance. She had felt destroyed at leaving her home at first, but now she felt free.

Perhaps her life wasn't really over after all?

 **Two days later**

Her life was over.

 _"Perhaps I'm new to this 'free' thing but doesn't it usually **not** involve being behind bars?"_

She groaned.

 _No seriously. You made that whole conversation about 'freedom' about how 'we are the masters of our own fate' and not even 24 hours later your behind bars. I would comment on your incompetence but the situation is way too amusing for me to properly get angry."_

Several drunk men walked closer to her cage. She took a deep breath.

 _"Or do you simply find the thought of being these pigs cum dump freeing?"_

The men opened the cage. She charged.

"Hey wha-"

He stopped talking as his head was cut off. Sakura immediately stabbed the one right next to him in the chest. She used her foot to free her sword and tried to attack the third one but he blocked the slash thanks to a metal gauntlet and ripped the sword from her hands. Sakura channeled some chakra and the sword was once again in her hands. She used his surprise to decapitate him.

 _"Do you have some sort of fetish for cutting necks or something?"_

She didn't reply, concentrating on her surroundings. Shit more men.

 _"You know, the situation is already boring as it us, the least you can do is answering me."_

She made to escape but the old woman from earlier was surrounded by men. She was old by Sakura's standards, but not the bandits. Still this was her only chance to escape-

 _"Aww and leave that poor poor lady to the mercy of a bunch of rapists? How cold."_

She winced. Sword had a point.

 _"I resent not having a name."_

 _"You didn't exactly give me any ideas."_

 _"Well, think of one!"_

 _"Wait! I'm thinking!"_

 _"Of the name? Good!"_

 _"No! About what should i do-"_

 _"We both know you're going to save her. We also both know you have no strategies. You can't preform seals, you only have one hand, the only thing you can do is leap about and use chakra strings."_

It had a point.

She crept upon the men and killed the first one from a stab from behind. She managed to get a good hit from the second one too, but she had to jump back from the first one. She dropped her sword, used chakra strings to make him loose balance and summoned the sword to her hand pointing towards the man immediately, killing him in the process with a thrust to the heart.

Only one remained.

He already had weapons raised though. She dropped the sword again and ripped the weapon out of his hand- unfortunately he was expecting that and used her strings against her, using their attachment to pull her off balance, not unlike what she did a few seconds before.

He stopped mid thrust as a piece of steel decapitated him. Huh?

The piece of steel was actually a sword, held by the woman from earlier. She had a strong stance, obviously experienced with the sword she was using.

"That stunt of yours cost me the mission." She said in an annoyed tone. "I suppose your intentions were good enough to over look them."

Huh?

"Nice job all things considered. The name is Yoshino, what about you?"

"S-sakura," she replied still in shock.

 _"So the 'defencless woman' is actually a ninja in disguise. Interesting."_

The woman pulled up her shorts to reveal a seal on the inside of her thigh. She released the seal and a bunch of equipment came out.

"So what's your story girl?" As she said this she quickly put on her stuff.

Sakura considered what to say to the now revealed Suna shinobi, assuming that the headband that she just put on wasn't fake of course.

 _"Just say the truth and be vague."_

"I used to be a shinobi, but got demoted after I messed with something I shouldn't have and lost my arm in exchange."

The woman whistled. "Not only do they cut off shinobi but they cut your arm off as well? Brutal."

No wait not like that-

"I sort of deserved it. Plus I was never really strong in the first case, I was good at information gathering and team work but not much else."

 _"Don't sell yourself short. You're quite good at problem solving and very creative."_

"I suppose you ran away then. Makes sense." She stared to inspect the area. "What are you going to do now?"

Sakura shrugged. _"You're going to give me a name."_

"You could come with me if you want. I could use a sidekick."

Sakura blinked in shock. What?!

The woman was nodding with a small smile. "I could use a hand in the upcoming missions. Although you can't follow me to Suna."

 _"That isn't suspicious at all."_

"Why?"

"Why you can't follow me?"

"Also that."

"Heh, well for the second question; I want you as back up: shinobi in Suna have a lot of competition lately, so if I pull off harder stuff 'alone' I get a promotion. You're obviously skilled- you haven't died yet, in the who knows how long of a journey it took you to get from Kiri. What's your first question?"

Sakura hummed to herself. Should she accept? _"Obviously, she probably has skills that she can teach you."_

"My first question was why you want me: I'm crippled. You can't possibly know how skilled I really am- I could have been just lucky until now."

The woman shook her head. "Being crippled isn't really a problem for the more skilled Suna shinobi. You have a point with the skills though...Tell you what: it would take me a day from here to get back to suna. A day to go, a day to get my stuff and a day to come back. Three days. If you have cleared out all of the bandits from here and know who's in charge plus their base, I'll make you more dangerous and teach you things.

She opened her mouth-

"You're good at information gathering right? Well, I suck at that. Even if I'm good at combat I can't become a jonin until I prove to my superiors that I'm good at information gathering. What do you say? Deal?

Sakura frowned and put her only hand to her chin, sword being sheathed.

It sounded good, but they were ninja. Somehow, she was losing in the offer.

 _"That is obvious. The real question should be 'can I gain something from this?' Or am I, Sakura Haruno, capable of surviving on my own?"_

 _"She could be hiding something."_

 _"Read her thoughts and see(?)"_

Point taken. A quick scan of her surface thoughts and she discovered that Suna used puppets a lot and a skilled shinobi could use pieces of puppets as a mechanical hand. It required perfect chakra control though. The woman wasn't lying however.

"I accept."

The woman smiled. "See you in three days."

 **3 days later**

"Just get rid of a few bandits she said! It will be easy she said!"

 _"Well, to be fair she said nothing about it being easy."_

 _"She nothing about bandits who could use chakra either!"_

Sakura continued to run, a twenty-something bandits following. She swiftly turned to the right and activated a the trap. The floor exploded.

"That little shit!" Screamed one of the survivors.

She activated more traps as rocks were thrown at high speeds hitting them in the face. Sakura took the opportunity to throw a smoke bomb.

The bomb was a pebble with a seal on it, inside was chakra transformed to water in a semi liquid-gas state. She'd call it 'mist' but it was closer to vapor. It had taken her almost 4 hours to make that.

The bomb exploded and no one could see, her included .

Thankfully her mind 'sight' didn't require light. She stabbed the remaining men.

 _"Nice."_

"Thanks." She had recently discovered that dying people's brain worked quite nicely, also their chakra levels were shit since the energy was used to keep a person alive. Unless she decapitated people, she could use their last moments to read their thoughts. As she did that she frowned, same information as yesterday.

There were three main groups and a single hidden one. The main were canon fodder, knew the basics of combat and were harmless unless there were many of them. The hidden one was made out of dozens of genin and chunin, while their leader was a jonin. She had read his profile in the bingo book: he was very good at illusions. She had gotten rid of group one the first day with Yoshino and managed to get rid of the other two in the remaining days. Only the hidden remained.

She senced a presence at the edge of her detection range that she basically always kept activated these days (She couldn't use it for a day straight but she flared it every few minutes).

Yoshino was back.

The jonin landed in the clearing. "I went to the other sites before coming here. You haven't finished. Deal's off."

"You said to kill bandits, not a group of ninjas from every rank."

"There are no kage level opponents," she said with a smile, "but you did well enough."

 _"Exactly as you asked you mean,"_ said Rayo, the sword she had given awareness to in the other world.

Yoshino unsealed a heavy looking bag. "Ok kid, this is your ticket to not being crippled again." As she said this she unpacked the bag. "Now come here."

It took at least an hour to put on. Sakura had been worried that her wound would get opened again but her fears had been proven wrong. It was similar to a strap, giving her an elbow once more and a shoulder pad.

It took her much longer to learn how to use it, even if she had near perfect chakra control. Yoshino had said that it usually took much longer, so that was a plus.

The prosthesis could even be opened on the top and had a small space which was normally used as a storage device (by using mini storage seals of course). Sakura intended to play with this function later.

It also stored a hidden blade on the bottom part and could be used by using chakra to move to 'hand' part of the prothesis slightly upwards and unleashing the blade. It was poisoned of course. This sort of thing was pretty standard when puppets were concerned. Sakura grinned to Yoshino. Fantastic.

"Now, I'll deal with the jonin, but it will take time to kill him, you deal with the rest-"

"I don't think that's a good idea. I can't last against a small army of ninjas for very long. You, on the other hand, can murder your way through them easily enough and I can probably win against the leader. If not you can back me up-"

"Are you out of your mind! He'll murder you easily! Do you even know who we are up against?!"

"Eisaku Soto, a skilled shinobi in all branches with a special preference for illusions. I think I can handle him."

Yoshino just face palmed. "Look, I get that you feel invincible because you have an arm again, but remember that this guy is a jonin, so suppress your arrogance for a bit and just listen-"

"You misunderstand: the original plan was me facing him on my own: I know I can take him." Mostly because she had a few special advantages but she didn't exactly want to declare that.

"I was joking kid, you weren't actually expected to kill him, I would have failed you if you didn't know anything because your strongest point is supposedly information gathering but that's it."

 _"Why don't you just-"_

 _"No talking when I'm talking or I'll get confused, we've already discussed this."_

Rayo sent a wordless concept to her brain. It took a lot of control to not smile.

"Very well," said Sakura to Yoshino. "This is what I've found out."

They were to attack on the night, the darkness would cover for them, which ment that they had to sleep during the day.

As Yoshino drifted off to sleep, Sakura tiptoed away.

It was annoying to have your judgement questioned, but it made sense since Yoshino didn't know about her psychic powers.

Yoshino didn't know that the dude was actually secretly married to a guy in the second camp she invaded. She probably did know that the Iwa population was incredibly homophobic, but Sakura doubted that she guessed anything. As Sakura murdered the guy, she found out all sort of things, like how Eisaku was actually pretty weak, but was dangerous because he could turn invisible and how her mind sense would make that advantage useless. She didn't know that a bandit had put her under an illusion but Rayo had freed her from it. She didn't know that Eisaku's fighting style involved strategies employed on the spot and that her psychic abilities would nullify any advantages.

So it was prefectly sensible for her to say 'no,' sensible, but wrong. So she went in the middle of the day when security was most lax, using Rayo's teleportation ability to get her by. Had Yoshino abandoned her, she still would have murdered the bastard. He was a narcissist and only cared about his desires, using anybody to get what he wanted. Using the different perspectives of the men she killed, she discovered that the man was a liar, one who didn't have any morals either.

The technical term was a sociopath.

He didn't escape Iwa because he was gay, he ran away to make a small empire, were he was king. The man probably wasn't even gay. From other perspectives, she saw how he sold the village secrets to the other nations, making a small fortune and keeping his money by making a human traffic trade and selling drugs. The guy was incredibly charismatic and manipulative, but those were his strengths. His weaknesses remained in combat. He was faster then her, stronger then her and even smarter, but those advantages would mean nothing with hers.

She approached his house, hidden in the immense foliage. There were 8 different people playing as scouts, while Eisaku slept. She could do this.

She waited a bit and as the two guards nearest to her turned, she threw Rayo into an open window, grabbing on to him as he summoned her just as he was about to hit the floor,not making a sound. Perfect.

She had been practising this a lot, but she only got this 6/10 times. Lucky.

As she walked as silently as possible towards the room, she made sure to escade the few traps that one of the men she had read made. There were probably more but she didn't care. She made it.

Eisaku slept before her. Who knows how many hundreds of lives he ruined in his life time? She stabbed him in the neck.

The mans eyes widened and then his body turned to rock. Ah shit, earth clone.

She took a deep breathe. She could still do this. She turned around and came face to face with the murderous sociopath.

"Now that's not nice." He said with a hurt frown. "I don't even know you and you're already trying to kill me!"

She had several responses for that, but she had seen how his words were dangerous so she said nothing. All he needed was a split seconds hesitation and he would murder her, his surface thoughts confirmed this.

"No reply? How boring little one!" As he said this he disappeared. Via mind sense she felt him move to the right and thanks to his surface thoughts she knew he was silently moving towards her, but the clone that he just created outside, covered by an illusion placed on her would kill her first if she didn't do something.

Rayo waked her out of the illusion, even though it wasn't really necessary thanks to this guy tendency to think so much.

She blocked the clone, jumped back and threw a kunai with an exploding tag and 'missed' (it wouldn't do to tell her opponent that she knew were he was while invisible, because she may have a few advantages, he still surpassed her in every ninja discipline, his arrogance would be his downfall, not her skill).

He jumped towards the side, his clone merely threw a few kunai to distract her. As the tag destroyed part of the building, Eisaku decided that playing with her wasn't worth the damage she was making and ran towards her at speeds she literally couldn't physically react to.

Thankfully her mind wasn't so limited.

In a split second, she commanded Rayo to teleport her in the same spot but a different position, one that had her left arm outstretched while her right hand held Rayo firmly.

She unleashed her hidden blade and struck him in the stomach and used the distraction to attempt to decapitate him.

He blocked of course, he still had better reflexes than her, but the poison within the hidden blade was already in his bloodstream. He'd die soon.

Problem A) she had to survive a few minutes, hours in shinobi time and problem B) the guards from earlier had arrived.

 _"Get out of here!"_

 _"I want his memories."_

 _"Leave me here, I'll summon you later!"_

A good idea actually. She threw Rayo at Eisaku and threw a smoke bomb towards the ground and escaped via shuishin, then started to quite literally, run for her life.

Not for long though. Apparently all the guards except two weak ones had chased after her so Rayo summoned her back.

She immediately stabbed the first, then threw Rayo at the second, grabbing him in mid air as Rayo teleported her to his side. She flipped and stabbed the remaining gaurd in the back.

Eisaku was surprised but quickly gained his wits. "A teleportation technique I see! Godamned Konoha ninja!"

She barely managed to block in time. The right accusation for the wrong reason. How ironic.

He coughed blood. She tried to slash him but he jumped back and casted several illusions.

Rayo woke her from all of them but she still nearly got killed by the fire jutsu sent her way. Apparently he wasn't risking getting close again. Annoying.

 _"Still, thank you Danzo with your impossible training standards."_ She thought to herself.

He coughed out more blood and dropped to the ground. Sakura wasn't fooled, thanks to her ability to read surface thoughts: he was planning to lunge at her as she got close. She decided to read his memories from afar as he died.

That's when she discovered a few interesting things.

In the end, Eisaku lunged at her but the poison was doing it's job, so she easily stabbed him. In his last moments she found out quite a lot.

For starters she would have been killed if she had followed through with Yoshino's plan: Eisaku considered his men to be nothing more than grunts, mostly because they didn't think at all and they had nothing except for their instincts and jutsu's. Jutsu's that would have killed her easily.

Having escaped death by a hairs length, she opened his hidden vault with the recently supplied password. It was a shame that she couldn't instantly learn every memory that a person ever had, because apparently the invisibility jutsu was in fact a jutsu and not a bloodline, but he learnt it many years ago and taught no one.

She opened the vault and stole the cash, scrolls and even few weapons that was inside and sealed them away. They would probably sell for something interesting.

"What do you think?" She asked Rayo.

 _That you need to build your reserves and find a better sheath; this one sucks._

She sighed. _"You know what I mean."_

 _"Mission accomplished? Ohh you mean about the women. They must have been in the other bases."_

 _"But everyone thought that there were more here!_

 _"That's a good indication that they were wrong ."_

Rayo was probably right. Still, every single bandit had at least a few thoughts about the 'hidden paridise' they this place was supposed to be. Till now she had only seen one house, a big one, that's for sure, but it was still _one_ house.

She shrugged though. No living thing could escape her mind eye, not even animals. They must have already sold the slaves.

That thought hurt her. She had to investigate more.

She searched Eisaku's body now that he was dead, her mind sense confirming this, but discovered nothing of importance. She stole his pouches though.

With nothing else to do she left the building and went back to camp.

As she lept outside she saw a dozen bodies on the floor and an angry Yoshino above them.

"Explain."

Sakura opened her mouth, but at this point Yoshino's thoughts conveyed how close the woman actually was to killing her. Apparently she didn't take insubordination so well. Made sense, she guessed; after all she had done to help Sakura, this is how the girl repaid her?

She needed to justify herself and fast.

"I knew a lot of things that I kept hidden. Their skills, tactics, and so on. I knew I would die against the underlings but stood a very decent chance against the boss. Also he's the reason why I'm not a virgin and don't have an arm. I wanted to end him personally."

 _Pleasebelievetheliepleasebelievethelie-_

Yoshino's gaze softened. Now Sakura wished that she hed been good enough to deep read all of Eisaku's thoughts. The guy was incredibly good at manipulation and the techniques worked for her too.

"But you're right, I should have listened or at least told you what I know, you're the one who gave me an arm after all, I was stupid."

"Quite." Was the stern, not angry, stern reply.

"I just go by hunches, hunches which are incredibly accurate but usually don't have solid proof, so no one believes me."

She wished she could cry, Eisaku usually faked a few tears at this point. She looked down instead.

"I understand if you hate me for being so disobedient...it's just that I really didn't want to die but knew you wouldn't believe me."

"It's all right." Yoshino said softly. "I expect you to tell me what you think you know next time however. I promise I will try to trust you."

Sakura smiled. The lady was actually pretty sweat.

 _"I wish I had a stomach so I could puke."_

 _"Hush."_

"C'mon," said Yoshino, "we have a bounty to collect."

 **A lot of people write Naruto as being an annoying idiot that would insist forever to anybody he considered a friend to remain at konoha no matter what. I disagree: Sasuke was just being an idiot. There was no reason he couldn't stay at konoha, get strong and go together with Narutoothers to kill Itachi. That was just Sasuke being greedy and having Orochimaru as a temporary teacher. Sakura's situation is different. She has no future within konoha, Naruto gets that (or at least my Naruto trained to think by Danzo gets that). One could say 'yeah but he still helped a cripple leave, she'll definitely die' _n_ _o_ she'd _probably_ * die. There's a difference.**


End file.
